Simon Schama: 'Brazil is a heaven and hell of a country'

I was dropped right in the middle of a gilets jaunes protest

Before the current restrictions kicked in I filmed a new series on the Romantics, which involved me being dropped by the production crew right in the middle of a crowd of the yellow-vested protesters in central Paris. It was a little bit hairy, but there wasn’t too much tear gas to deal with and it was nothing I hadn’t experienced before.The first time had been during the 1968 student demonstrations against De Gaulle.

The Quantock Hills in Somerset is a place of mind-blowing beauty

I was there researching Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which gave me the opportunity to spend some more time in the area. I was tinvestigating the period when Coleridge was composing Kubla Khan, possibly under the influence of opium. We filmed last September at the actual farmhouse where he took refuge from a rainstorm to write his masterpiece. Did we reimagine the whole scene? You might possibly think that, but no. Although cups of tea were involved.

Cooking is often central to my travel plans

But I have had a few issues because of that passion. I always travel with my own knives in my luggage (not my hand luggage, obviously), particularly when we’re travelling to a beautiful house we’ve visited many times just outside Todi in Umbria, Italy. The property has a spectacular view and a pretty good kitchen and I’m friends with the local butcher. Our children and now our three grandsons come with us, and cooking is kind of a big deal in the family.

I was stopped by security guards at Atocha train station in Madrid

They found my chef’s knives, not long after the terrorist bombing in 2004. I always wrap my six or seven knives in a towel and put them in my hold luggage, but because we were taking the train to Barcelona rather than flying, I forgot I had them with me. Luckily, the guards didn’t call the police, but our train to Catalonia was coming in at speed, so I actually ditched the knives in a rubbish bin. Perhaps a passing cook found them and got about £500 worth of knives for free.

My most memorable meal was in the Brazilian rainforest

We took a boat trip to some nearby islands when suddenly there was thunder and lightning so we sheltered beneath the canopy of the rainforest. Another small boat followed us in and the crew brought with them some freshly caught fish – oily and scaly, like mackerel – which they cooked over smoke from some palm leaves to produce an improvised meal fit for a king or queen.

My most treasured travel memento is a Dutch green pub glass

I picked it up in Amsterdam and it dates back to the 1630s. It has a hollow middle and is called a roemer, which means “empty stem” in Dutch. I do occasionally pick it up back in the UK, but I’m scared to drink from it.

I still walk around the Tower of London like a nine-year-old

I never get historical travel fatigue; there are always new things to discover and I’m always living inside this cloud of dead people who whisper in my ear as I walk around, “You certainly got me wrong in the last book you wrote, didn’t you?” Part of being a historian is that you have to be greedy. And I don’t mean food greed. I mean experience greed, curiosity greed. You have to have this rather naive, childlike openness.

It was utterly magical spending Christmas in Havana one year

One of my daughter’s best friends was living there with her husband, so we attended the graduation of the dance school their children attended. Then, a few days later, we witnessed this incredible Cuban drummer – goodness gracious, it was one of the best percussion performances I’ve heard.

Living in Amsterdam in Rembrandt’s time would be a dream 

Notwithstanding the odd bout of bubonic plague, obviously. I’d love to have experienced that ultimate kind of pleasure palace where there was nothing you couldn’t buy, nothing you couldn’t watch, no music that you couldn’t hear – and the paintings were pretty good, too.

Brazil is a heaven and hell of a country

Something like that island fish experience is heaven (see above), but there is plenty of hell there. Once I was approached by a 12-year-old boy offering to “look after” my car. There’s so much crime and poverty on the streets.

We used to take our children time and again to Kona Village in Hawaii

You would arrive at this tiny little airport surrounded by black lava rock and white coral, with people’s names etched into it, then travel through the lava fields where you stayed in these beautiful Polynesian huts. You ate outdoors most of the time, under beautiful skies full of extraordinary stars.

Interview by Nick McGrath

Simon Schama will be discussing his favourite passages from Shakespeare in an online Intelligence Squared event on July 8. For more details, go to intelligencesquared.com