Sir Simon Schama delivers powerful message about fighting antisemitism with Jewish history

The professor said his knighthood would spur him on to finish the third book.

“This is not time for slacking off," he said.

"I'll be using those knightly spurs to carry on the megillah, and get to the end of volume three not just for us but for everyone else who shares the pages of our story.”

He joked: "It can't hurt to have another Jewish knight can it?

"My first thought of course is what would my father - for whom Jewish knighthood would have been a koshered up Falstaff (minus the petty crime) and my mother, the proud MBE, have thought?

"Probably something along the lines of 'so they couldnt do it while we were still alive?'"

Holocaust survivor Sir Ben Helfgott and Labour MP Dame Louise Ellman are among the well-known Jewish people to also receive honours in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Other Jewish people to receive honours include Colonel Martin Newman, chairman of the Jewish Committee for HM Forces, who received an MBE for voluntary service to the armed forces, and the economist and newly-appointed member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, Prof Jonathan Haskel, who was made a CBE.