When Herbert von Karajan was at his celestial height in the 1960s, juggling conducting duties at the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival, his musicians liked to tell a joke. ‘Karajan gets in a taxi, and the driver asks, “Where to?” Karajan says, “It doesn’t matter, they want me everywhere.”’ Not bad for a German joke.

You want to dump on Trump? Send for Schama! A fresh look at Rembrandt? There’s a professor at Columbia who knows everything!

Who is the Karajan of our day, hopping from gig to gig with the assurance of the born maestro? It must be Simon Schama, historian supreme, and transatlantic darling of the telly. You want to dump on Trump? Send for Schama! A fresh look at Rembrandt? There’s a professor at Columbia who knows everything! Can Tottenham light up White Hart Lane? We know the chap who can flick the switch!

His latest television series for the BBC, where he serves as a regimental goat for matters cultural, is The Story of Us, a three-parter about that perennial: ‘who we are now’. It’s fair to say the reviews have been patchy, as they were for the last series he fronted, The Romantics and Us, which went out five years ago.

Us. Note that word. Schama is fond of the first person plural, those things which........

© The Spectator