Some lost worlds of Eric Hobsbawm: interviews with a communist historian: 1990-2001

Abstract

By common consent one of the finest historians of his generation, Eric Hobsbawm was also a longstanding member of the British Communist Party. In particular, his formative years as a historian spanned the period from the popular front communism of the 1930s to the post-war Communist Party Historians' Group. The background and activities of the Historians' Group have been described many times, including by Hobsbawm himself. Nevertheless, in these interviews recorded between 1990 and 2001 Hobsbawm opened up regarding the role of key networks and personalities that did not always figure in accounts like his autobiography Interesting Times. Notably among them are Dona Torr and John Morris, the historian of the classical world with whom Hobsbawm launched the journal Past and Present at the height of the Cold War.