Middle East Dialogues: A Conversation with Simon Sebag Montefiore

This event is part of the Middle East Dialogues, a series of in-depth conversations with leading scholars, intellectuals, and public servants exposing students and the public to varied and vital perspectives on the region, the transformations and turmoil underway, and prospects for peace and prosperity.

Learn more about the Middle East Dialogues on our website.

Watch previous conversations in the series on our YouTube page.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is an internationally bestselling author and historian whose prize-winning books have been published in forty-eight languages. Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the British Book Awards ‘History Book of the Year Prize.’ Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Prize (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Biography (USA), Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France), the Kreisky Prize (Austria). Jerusalem: The Biography - A History of the Middle East won the Wenjin Book Prize (People’s Republic of China) and Jewish Book Council’s Book of the Year Prize (US). The Romanovs won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Prize (Italy). The World: A Family History of Humanity was The Times History Book of the Year. In 2025, Montefiore won the Metropolis Bleu Festival’s Words to Change Prize for Life’s Work (Canada). He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter, which won the PP Political Novel of the Year Prize (UK). He is the presenter of five BBC history series, and many of his books are being developed for movies or drama series. He read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he received his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD). 

His newest book is The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East, which chronicles the rich, complex, and tumultuous history of the Middle East over the last one hundred and twenty-five years, and explores how it informs the region's present and future.