Eric Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria and grew up in Vienna and Berlin in the l930s. He read history at Cambridge and since 1947 has taught at Birkbeck College, University of London where he is now Emeritus Professor, as well as holding visiting fellowships at universities around the world. He has seventeen honorary doctorates and many other awards and honours.

He has written on the Long Nineteenth Century and the twentieth century (THE AGE OF EXTREMES which has been translated into thirty six languages). He has also written a volume of memoirs, INTERESTING TIMES.

“May you live in interesting times” is one of the more sinister of Chinese curses and that is exactly what Eric Hobsbawm did. Born in Alexandria he grew up in Vienna until the death of both his parents caused him to be sent to live with an uncle in Berlin and so he saw throughout his adolescence the events of the 1930s unfolding. He joined the Communist Party and worked for it throughout the Second World War and for many years after. Here are his memoirs.

Eric Hobsbawm is one of our most distinguished historians. Now in his eighties, his reflections upon his interesting times are fresh and startling.