Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.
Simon SchamaNations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.
Simon SchamaThe older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.
Simon SchamaTo collude in the minimisation of British history on the grounds of its imagined irrelevance to our rebranded national future, or from a suspicion that it does no more than recycle patriotic pieties unsuited to a global marketplace, would be an act of appallingly self-inflicted collective memory loss.
Simon Schama