As a historian, Sir Simon Schama has long chronicled the suffering of the Jewish people.

But nothing prepared him for the horror of Oct 7 2023, which he describes as a “punch to the soul”.

Speaking to The Telegraph to mark the first anniversary on Monday of the massacre in which more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered and 254 taken hostage, Sir Simon said the events of that day led him to “drop into a sort of sinkhole”.

Casting his mind back to last October, he said it was “horrifying” and “unforgivable” that before any Israeli troops had even entered Gaza, “the victims were being blamed for the catastrophe and people just started screaming ‘genocide’ at us”.