Simon Sebag Montefiore knows the five best songs about history ever written
One of them is Sympathy For The Devil. The Stranglers are in the Top Five too, as are the Strawbs. The best-selling historian and documentary-maker has spent the last three years working on his monumental, all-encompassing new book, ‘The World: A Family History’, much of it hammered out to the sound of very loud music. And he’s made a playlist to accompany it that connects with this vast human drama – Billie Holiday, Billy Bragg, Ava Max and Elvis Costello all in the mix. He talks here about songwriters who are obsessed with history (Mick Jagger, Leonard Cohen, Dylan, Elton John), global…
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