Historian Sir Simon Schama has delivered a powerful message about how teaching Jewish history can challenge rising antisemitism.

Sir Simon, who was knighted in Friday's Queen’s Birthday Honours, recently presented the BBC series The Story Of The Jews, adapted from his three-volume history of the Jewish people, the final book of which he is still writing.

"Our Jewish community is feeling a little beleaguered, if not alarmed by the rise of antisemitism,” he told the JC.

“In spreading that story lies the power of defying and defeating stereotypes, distortions and dehumanisations, as well as celebrating the passions, wisdom and beauty of our own heritage.”

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.