Eric Hobsbawm dies, aged 95

By Esther Addley        

guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 October 2012 

Lifelong Marxist, whose work influenced generations of historians and politicians, dies after long illness.

Eric Hobsbawm, one of the leading historians of the 20th century, has died, his family said on Monday. Hobsbawm, a lifelong Marxist whose work influenced generations of historians and politicians, died in the early hours of Monday morning at the Royal Free Hospital in London after a long illness, his daughter Julia said. He was 95. Hobsbawm's four-volume history of the 19th and 20th centuries, spanning European history from the French revolution to the fall of the USSR, is acknowledged as among the defining works on the period. Fellow historian Niall Ferguson called the quartet, from The Age of Revolution to 1994's The Age of Extremes, "the best starting point I know for anyone who wishes to begin studying modern history". Hobsbawm was dubbed "Neil Kinnock's guru" in the early 1990s, after criticising the Labour party for failing to keep step with social changes, and was regarded as influential in the birth of New Labour, though he later expressed disappointment with the government of Tony Blair.

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