Remembering Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm died in London on October 1, 2012. He was among the leading historians of the twentieth-century. Indeed at the time of his death he was almost universally described as “arguably Britain’s most respected historian,” (Kettle and Wedderburn, 2012) and this despite his long-standing commitment to Marxism. It’s not hard to see why. His productivity was extraordinary, stretching from the 1940s to the 2010s, and his intellectual range was immense, moving effortlessly from the Swing Riots and the Industrial Revolution to popular rebellion and global terrorism. In these terms, comparisons don’t come easily to mind.