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Schama on Shakespeare

Art &
Culture

Historian and cultural critic Simon Schama came to Intelligence Squared to talk about his favourite passages of Shakespeare – the ones that have shaped him and affected him most deeply

On July 8 historian and cultural critic Simon Schama comes to Intelligence Squared to talk about his favourite passages of Shakespeare – the ones that have shaped him and affected him most deeply. He will be in conversation with the BBC broadcaster Razia Iqbal, and they will be joined by actors David Harewood, who was the first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre, and Olivia Williams, star of films including Rushmore, The Sixth Sense and An Education.

The event is part of a new series hosted by Iqbal called Touchstones, in which creative people talk about works of literature, art, places or objects that give them solace or inspiration.

Watch the event live and have your chance to type in your question during the Q and A.

Event Name

Schama on Shakespeare

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Speakers for the motion

  • Sir Simon Schama

    Award-winning historian and broadcaster, whose latest book is Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations

Featuring

  • Razia Iqbal

    Journalist and broadcaster

Chair

  • David Harewood MBE

    One of Britain’s best known actors

  • Olivia Williams

    Actor who has appeared in British and American films and television

Speakers are subject to change.

Speakers

Speaker

Sir Simon Schama

Award-winning historian and broadcaster, whose latest book is Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations

University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and Contributing Editor of the Financial Times. He previously taught at Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard Universities. He is the author of 19 books, including The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Rembrandt's Eyes; A History of Britain trilogy; The American Future: A History, and two volumes of The Story of the Jews. He is the writer-presenter of 60 documentaries on art, history and literature for BBC television including films on Tolstoy, John Donne and Rembrandt as well as multi-part award-winning series including A History of Britain and The Power of Art which won an International Emmy for the film on Bernini.  Most recently his History of Now series aired on BBC2 in November-December 2022.  His art criticism for The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism in 1996 and he won the NCR prize for non-fiction for Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, the W.H. Smith Literary Award for Landscape and Memory, and the National Book Critics Circle prize for non-fiction for Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution. He has received the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for Literature; the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement; and the Premio Antonio Feltrinelli Prize in historical sciences from the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.  He has curated exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, collaborated with and contributed to catalogues for shows by Cy Twombly, Alex Katz, Christo and Sally Mann and most recently worked with Cai Guo-Qiang on his Odyssey and Homecoming Retrospective at the Palace Museum, Beijing. His work has been translated into twenty three languages. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations, his twentieth book, is published in May 2023.  
Actors

David Harewood MBE

One of Britain’s best known actors

One of Britain’s best known actors. He appears frequently on television, and has had roles in Cold Feet, Spooks, The Night Manager and Homeland. In film, he has starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in the Oscar-nominated Blood Diamond and alongside Laurence Fishburne in Madiba. He was the first black actor to play the title role in Othello at the National Theatre in 1997, and he has played many of Shakespeare's lead roles on prestigious stages around the world. He has also taken part in several documentaries and talks on Shakespeare.

Olivia Williams

Actor who has appeared in British and American films and television

Actor who began her career working with the Royal Shakespeare Company in both Stratford-upon-Avon and London. She made her film debut in The Postman (1997), and went on to play the part of Rosemary Cross in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998), Bruce Willis's wife in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense (1999), Madeleine in The Heart of Me (2002), for which she won the British Independent Film Award for Best Actress, the sympathetic teacher in An Education (2009), and Ruth Lang in Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer (2010).

 

Speakers and actors are subject to change.

Chair

Razia Iqbal

Journalist and broadcaster

Razia was special correspondent at the BBC for over three decades and from 2011 to 2023 anchored Newshour on the BBC World Service. She is currently teaching at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where she holds the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professorship.