Interview with Simon Schama, British historian (in a room at The Ritz hotel on Piccadilly in London, overlooking Green Park). Schama talks about the beauty of history that he recognized as a child, his Jewish background, the necessity of history, because it offers a counterbalance to the dangerous limitations of the present and his poetic approach to history instead of finding out historical facts. Schama discusses a passage from his book 'Landscape and Memory' that is about his journey through Poland, from which his family was expelled.