Eric Hobsbawn
Sad news today that historian Eric Hobsbawn has died aged 95 after a long illness. But what a remarkable life.
In my humble opinion there has been no finer Western historian. His fourth volume in the Age series The Age of Extremes: 1914-91 about world history from 1914-1991 is among the finest books of history I have read. Hobsbawn wrote that this was "the most extraordinary and terrible century in human history".
What the Guardian writes about him in their Obituary is so true.
"The sheer scope of his interest in the past, and his exceptional command of what he knew, continued to humble those who talked to him and those who read him, most of all in the four-volume Age of... series in which he distilled the history of the capitalist world from 1789 to 1991"Obituaries can be found here and here.
Some of his most recent articles from the London Review of Books is here.
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