At age 93, historian Eric Hobsbawm is still very active. He was recently interviewed about his long career and the resurgence in interest in Marxism following the Global Financial Crisis. Tristam Hunt touches on one of the most attractive features of Hobsbawm’s personality– his cosmopolitanism.
With a well-thumbed copy of the Financial Times on the coffee table, Eric moved seamlessly from the outgoing President Lula of Brazil’s poll ratings to the ideological difficulties faced by the Communist party in West Bengal to the convulsions in Indonesia following the 1857 global crash. The global sensibility and lack of parochialism, always such a strength of his work, continue to shape his politics and history.
Hobsbawm’s latest book is reviewed here. For a pretty critical take on Hobsbawm, see here. For more positive assessments of the man, see here and here.
The Past Speaks 