SOURCE: “On the Forest Path,” in Times Literary Supplement, April 7, 1995, pp. 3–4.

In the following review of Landscape and Memory, Hill commends Schama's revealing insights, but finds shortcomings in his cliched generalizations and occasionally rapid pace.

From the top of Mont Blanc you can see all the way to the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, or at least you can if you go with Simon Schama. He takes us to the summit in the boisterous company of Albert smith, ex-medical student and mountebank with an eye to the main chance. Smith made the journey in 1851 provisioned with four shoulders of mutton, ten cheeses and numerous other comestibles, none of which weighed so heavily on him as the desire to climb above his obscure origins and make it big in the booming Alpine business. Seven months later he treated London audiences, including an enthusiastic Prince Consort, to The Ascent of Mont...