After recently revealing BBC plans for a Simon Schama history of the Jews, I can now give more details.

The five-part series, covering 4,000 years from ancient Israelites to modern Jewish entertainers, is due to be broadcast next year on BBC2. The story is "fundamental in the history of the civilisation", said commissioning editor Martin Davidson.

Schama, acclaimed for his series on America and Britain, was typically effervescent: "Zachor! Remember, the sages command us, so if you're an historian how can you not want to tell this epic story?

"From the invention of the single faceless God to the invention of psychoanalysis, the Jewish story brims with illumination; ordeal and cultural revolutions; with poetry, politics and picturing," he said.

"One of the first American presidents said that from their mere numbers the Jews ought to have been no more than a mere puff of stardust amidst the constellations; but they have been more like an explosive sunspot that never dies down."