西蒙·塞巴格·蒙蒂菲奥里

西蒙·乔纳森·塞巴格·蒙蒂菲奥里（英语：Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore，1965年6月27日—）英国历史学家、电视节目主持人、流行历史书和小说作家，英国皇家文学学会研究员，1965年生于伦敦。剑桥大学冈维尔与凯斯学院历史专业。作品包括《青年斯大林》、《耶路撒冷三千年》、《大人物的世界史》、《罗曼诺夫皇朝》等。

著作

《凯瑟琳大帝与波将金的帝国爱情》（Catherine the Great and Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair）2001年出版，初名《王子中的王子：波坦金的生平》（The Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin），讲述了凯瑟琳大帝和她的情人格里戈里·亚历山德罗维奇·波将金的爱情故事。

《斯大林：红色沙皇的宫廷》（Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar）2003年

《青年斯大林》（Young Stalin），2007年

《怪兽：历史上最邪恶的男人和女人》（Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women），2008年

《耶路撒冷三千年》（Jerusalem: The Biography），2011年

《大人物的世界史》（Titans of History），2012年

《罗曼诺夫皇朝》（The Romanovs 1613–1918），2016年

Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore ( 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).

In 2026, Knopf published his history of the modern Near East, The Cauldron, and how violence forged the modern Middle East.

Early life

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.

Sebag 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.

Career

Sebag Montefiore worked as a banker, a foreign affairs journalist, and a war correspondent covering the conflicts during the fall of the Soviet Union.

Sebag 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, Grand prix de la biographie politique du Touquet-Paris-Plage 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.

Sebag Montefiore is also the author of the novels One Night in Winter and Sashenka. One Night in Winter won the Political Novel of the Year Prize and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Buckingham.

Personal life

Montefiore lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore (née Palmer-Tomkinson). They have two children. He and his wife were brought together by the historian Andrew Roberts, who thought "they would be absolutely perfect for each other because they were the only two people he knew who could remember the words to Evita off by heart". The couple are friends of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Montefiore was appointed as a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in September 2021.

He publishes as Simon Sebag Montefiore but prefers to be addressed as Sebag Montefiore.