The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

February 13, 2018

February 13, 1945

The Diamond Jubilee flotilla event, celebrating the current British monarch's reign up to then, happened on June 3, 2012, and received international publicity. The guests on that trip down the Thames included Simon Schama, (February 13, 1945) a famous writer, of histories. His fame is earned. Some of his books are:

The Embarrassment of Riches : an interpretation of dutch culture in the Golden Age(1988)
Citizens : a chronicle of the French Revolution (1989)
Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) (1992)
Landscape and Memory (1995)
Rembrandt's eyes (1999).



And, his resume includes:

'His art columns for the New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism and his journalism has appeared regularly in the Guardian and the Financial Times where he is Contributing Editor. He has written and presented forty films for BBC2 on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics and John Donne and won an Emmy for The Power of Art.'

This graduate of Cambridge, currently at Columbia University, is a cultural critic for The New Yorker. From his book,

The American Future: A History  (2010), we quote a bit, specifically a description of a speech Dick Cheney delivered on Veteran's Day, 2007.

'... Cheney would [occasionally] look up from the teleprompter, sight line briefly changed and then move impassively to the next homily, like a tank rolling over a cat. It was warm on 11 November, and the temper in the amphitheater was jocund.'


Is there something about post-colonial cultures that supports intellectual splendor? I think of Schama, Peter Ackroyd, Claire Tomalin, Winchester, and marvel at their industry.

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