Books: Over the Rainbow ; after Two Decades of US Success, Simon Schama Repays His Hosts with a Book about the Slaves Who Chose British Freedom. BOYD TONKIN Meets the Prince of Paradox

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Twenty minutes into the interview, a grey cloud rolled out of plebeian Kilburn and began to spit from the late-August skies on to the roof terrace atop an ice-cream stucco pile in the secretive bourgeois backwater of Little Venice. As the treacherous heavens above London watered his tame thicket of pot plants, the foremost narrative historian of his time " a wiry, bouncing streak of energy and eloquence, 60 going on 16 " swept up the teapot and made an epoch-defining move. 'It's pissing,' he said. 'Let's go in...'

You would no more bother to parody most historians (however ineptly) than you would mimic the average actuary. With Simon Schama, the case is altered. His …