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Simon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore (/ˈsiːbæɡ ˌmɒntəfiˈɔːri/ SEE-bag MON-tə-fee-OR-ee; born 27 June 1965) is a British historian, television presenter and author of history books and novels, including Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003), Jerusalem: The Biography (2011), The Romanovs 1613–1918 (2016), and The World: A Family History of Humanity (2022).
Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in London into a family of Jewish descent that had escaped Romanov Russia's pogroms. His father was psychotherapist Stephen Eric Sebag Montefiore (1926–2014), a great-grandson of the banker Sir Joseph Sebag-Montefiore, the nephew and heir of the wealthy philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore.
Simon's mother was Phyllis April Jaffé (1927–2019) from the Lithuanian Jewish branch of the Jaffe family. Her parents fled the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. They bought tickets for New York City, but were cheated, being instead dropped off at Cork, Ireland. In 1904, due to the Limerick boycott, her father, Henry Jaffé, left the country and moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Simon's brother is Hugh Sebag-Montefiore.
Montefiore was educated at Ludgrove School and at Harrow School, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Harrovian. At the age of 17, he worked in South African gold mines, saying in 2023 "These were the last years of apartheid. I wanted to see its collapse first-hand."
In the autumn of 1983 he interviewed UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher for The Harrovian. He won an exhibition to read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he received his MA (Cantab) and Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) degrees.
Montefiore worked as a banker, a foreign affairs journalist, and a war correspondent covering the conflicts during the fall of the Soviet Union.
Montefiore's book Catherine the Great & Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Marsh Biography Award. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won History Book of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the LA Times Book Prize for Best Biography, the Costa Book Award, the Bruno Kreisky Award for Political Literature, Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Jerusalem: The Biography was a number one non-fiction Sunday Times bestseller and a global bestseller and won the Jewish Book of the Year Award from the Jewish Book Council. It also won a Chinese literary prize, the 10th Wenjin Book Prize, awarded by the National Library of China.
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Simon Sebag Montefiore
Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore (/ˈsiːbæɡ ˌmɒntəfiˈɔːri/ SEE-bag MON-tə-fee-OR-ee; born 27 June 1965) is a British historian, television presenter and author of history books and novels, including Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003), Jerusalem: The Biography (2011), The Romanovs 1613–1918 (2016), and The World: A Family History of Humanity (2022).
Simon Sebag Montefiore was born in London into a family of Jewish descent that had escaped Romanov Russia's pogroms. His father was psychotherapist Stephen Eric Sebag Montefiore (1926–2014), a great-grandson of the banker Sir Joseph Sebag-Montefiore, the nephew and heir of the wealthy philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore.
Simon's mother was Phyllis April Jaffé (1927–2019) from the Lithuanian Jewish branch of the Jaffe family. Her parents fled the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. They bought tickets for New York City, but were cheated, being instead dropped off at Cork, Ireland. In 1904, due to the Limerick boycott, her father, Henry Jaffé, left the country and moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Simon's brother is Hugh Sebag-Montefiore.
Montefiore was educated at Ludgrove School and at Harrow School, where he was editor of the school newspaper, The Harrovian. At the age of 17, he worked in South African gold mines, saying in 2023 "These were the last years of apartheid. I wanted to see its collapse first-hand."
In the autumn of 1983 he interviewed UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher for The Harrovian. He won an exhibition to read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he received his MA (Cantab) and Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) degrees.
Montefiore worked as a banker, a foreign affairs journalist, and a war correspondent covering the conflicts during the fall of the Soviet Union.
Montefiore's book Catherine the Great & Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Marsh Biography Award. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won History Book of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the LA Times Book Prize for Best Biography, the Costa Book Award, the Bruno Kreisky Award for Political Literature, Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Jerusalem: The Biography was a number one non-fiction Sunday Times bestseller and a global bestseller and won the Jewish Book of the Year Award from the Jewish Book Council. It also won a Chinese literary prize, the 10th Wenjin Book Prize, awarded by the National Library of China.