"Actor: Simon Schama"

• Simon Schama - The Power Of Art | DVD | (20/11/2006) from £12.98   |  Saving you £12.01 (92.53%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Great art has dreadful manners "" Simon Schama observes wryly at the start of his epic and explosive exploration of the power and whole point of art. ""The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things; visions that soothe charm and beguile but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock rough up your composure and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality..."" With the same disarming force The Power of Art propels us on an eye-opening breathtaking odyssey zooming in on eight extraordinary masterpieces from Caravaggio's David and Goliath to Picasso's Guernica. Jolting us far from the comfort zone of the hushed art gallery Schama closes in on intense make-or-break turning points in the lives of eight great artists who under extreme stress created something unprecedented altering the course of art forever

• The Story of the Jews | DVD | (30/09/2013) from £8.49   |  Saving you £11.50 (135.45%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Simon Schama looks at the impact of the Jews and those moments when the Jewish experience - what Jews have thought and written, uttered, mourned and acclaimed - has changed the fate of the world. Drawing on his scholarship, his original viewpoints, and his own family history, Schama presents a series about the Jewish story that is at once deeply historical and bracingly contemporary. Travelling the globe from New York to Odessa, Berlin to Jerusalem, he tells ancient and modern stories that illuminate the passions and perplexities of the Jewish people today. Sure to capture a wide and appreciative audience, The Story of the Jews rests at heart on the difference between distinctiveness and isolation. Since the creation of the Bible, the Jewish world has been distinct, but never truly isolated. The Jewish story needs to be told afresh because it is a story of our deep human connectedness.

• Civilisations | DVD | (30/04/2018) from £10.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  This genre-defining series explores the history of civilisation through the prism of art. Great masterpieces are brought closer and made clearer than ever before, from Cambodia's majestic Angkor Wat temple to Michelangelo's exquisite Basilica of St Peter. Inspired by Kenneth Clark's groundbreaking series, it's an epic story of passion and struggle, introducing a new generation to classic works created across the continents. Civilisations explores the visual culture of societies from around the globe, revealing alongside the magnificent objects made in the West the wealth of treasures created by other cultures. From the landscape scrolls of classical China and the sculpture of the Olmecs to African bronzes, Japanese prints and Mughal miniatures. Told by three presenters, each bringing their own skills and perspectives to the series Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga.

• Simon Schama - A History of Britain : The Complete Series | DVD | (18/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £59.99

  Stretching from the Stone Age to the year 2000, Simon Schama's Complete History of Britain does not pretend to be a definitive chronicle of the turbulent events which buffeted and shaped the British Isles. What Schama does do, however, is tell the story in vivid and gripping narrative terms, free of the fustiness of traditional academe, personalising key historical events by examining the major characters at the centre of them. Not all historians would approve of the history depicted here as shaped principally by the actions of great men and women rather than by more abstract developments, but Schama's way of telling it is a good deal more enthralling as a result. Schama successfully gives lie to the idea that the history of Britain has been moderate and temperate, passing down the generations as stately as a galleon, taking on board sensible ideas but steering clear of sillier, revolutionary ones. Nonsense. Schama retells British history the way it was--as bloody, convulsive, precarious, hot-blooded and several times within an inch of haring off onto an entirely different course. Schama seems almost to delight in the goriness of history. Themes returned to repeatedly include the wars between the Scots and the Irish and the Catholic/Protestant conflicts--only the Irish question remains unresolved by the new millennium. As Britain becomes a constitutional monarchy, Schama talks less of Kings and Queens but of poets and idea-makers like Orwell. Still, with his pungent, direct manner and against an evocative visual and aural backdrop, Schama makes history seem as though it happened yesterday, the bloodstains not yet dry. On the DVD: The Complete History of Britain extras are generously packaged on a separate disc and include the original score and a Simon Schama biography. There's an interesting "promotional message" to camera in which Schama explains the role of a cab driver, Wally, in inspiring the series, along with an interview with Mark Lawson in which Schama stresses the deliberate subjectivity of these programmes and an inaugural BBC History lecture in which he defends TV's ability to transpose history to camera. --David Stubbs

• Simon Schama's The Face Of Britain | DVD | (16/11/2015) from £8.98   |  Saving you £11.01 (122.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Historian Simon Schama joins forces with National Portrait Gallery curators to create five new displays exploring the development, character and meanings of British portraiture. Staged throughout the Gallery, portraits from across the Collection will be displayed for the first time by theme rather than chronology, taking a long view of the history of portraits in each room. Each display will comprise a cross-period selection in various media, exploring one of the following themes: Power, Love, Fame, People and Self. Simon Schama's The Face of Britain will broadcast on BBC Two in September coincide with the broadcast of a new five-part TV series on BBC Two and the publication of an accompanying book by Viking/Penguin Random House this autumn.

• Simon Schamas - America - A Future | DVD | (03/11/2008) from £7.49   |  Saving you £17.50 (233.65%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Historian Simon Schama offers his insights into the 2008 US Presidential election.

• Rough Crossings | DVD | (30/07/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  It's the Revolutionary War in 1776. You are an enslaved African in America. The British ask you to fight your American slave masters and gain your freedom. What do you do? This is one of the questions that intrigued historian Simon Schama about this incredible adventure story set against the backdrop of a pivotal moment in Anglo American history. Combining Schama's trademark compelling storytelling with reconstruction and dramatisation Rough Crossings challenges many of the preconceived notions of this period as it tells the story of the thousands of African-American slaves who decided their future freedom did not lie with the claims of liberty made by the American patriots but with the British and their King. Rough Crossings is the true drama of escape from cruel slave plantations through the fires of the war to the dream of freedom in bone-chilling Nova Scotia and sweltering Sierra Leone. It is the story of a turbulent historical moment with a cast of memorable characters such as Englishman John Clarkson a passionate advocate of the great moral crusade of his age - the abolition of slavery - and two remarkable African men Thomas Peters and David George who escaped slavery and hardship to join Clarkson on an epic journey in search of their freedom.

• Simon Schama Collection : History Of Britain / Power of Art / Rough Crossings - 10 Disc BBC Box Set (Exclusive to Amazon.co.uk) | DVD | (12/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £79.99

• Simon Schama's Shakespeare | DVD | (30/03/2015) from £26.98   |  Saving you £-6.99 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99