Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012)

De Grote Man is dood. 95 jaar…, het zat er dus aan te komen.
"Marxistisch historicus." Wat wil je, met dat geboortejaar.
Wat ik wel zeker weet: zijn kwartet Age of Revolution (1789-1848), Age of Capital (1848-1875), Age of Empire (1875-1914) en Age of Extremes (1914-1991) is van het beste van wat er over de laatste 200 jaar is geschreven. Die boeken zijn voor weinig geld te koop op www.amazon.co.uk.
Verder raad ik ook zijn autobiografie Interesting Times aan. Nog te lezen: How To Change The World.

Dat Hobsbawm een kind was van Old Europe blijkt uit de obituary uit The Guardian:

Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria, a good place for a historian of empire, in 1917, a good year for a communist. He was second-generation British, the grandson of a Polish Jew and cabinet-maker who came to London in the 1870s. Eight children, who included Leopold, Eric's father, were born in England and all took British citizenship at birth (...).

But Eric was British of no ordinary background. Another uncle, Sidney, went to Egypt before the first world war and found a job there in a shipping office for Leopold. There, in 1914, Leopold Hobsbawm met Nelly Gruen, a young Viennese from a middle-class family who had been given a trip to Egypt as a prize for completing her school studies. The two got engaged, but the first world war broke out and they were separated. The couple eventually married in Switzerland in 1916, returning to Egypt for the birth of Eric, their first child.