Better red than dead – the life of Comrade Hobsbawm

Further to yesterday's obituary of Eric Hobsbawm, in 1952 and 1953 it was my privilege - a word he often used in various contexts – to be supervised by Eric, as an undergraduate, a raw youth straight from a tank crew in the British Army of the Rhine. Unlike a number of distinguished don colleagues, he required one's essay to be delivered to his rooms at least three days before the submission date. The result was that he had time to read it more than cursorily and knew exactly the points he thought it was worth pursuing. No tutor could have been more dismissive of irrelevance or cant, and more direct in getting to the substance of any historical issue.

Eric Hobsbawm, one of the greatest British historians of the 20th century, has died at the age of 95, his family announced today.

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The Marxist historian died today. In this review for the Independent on Sunday, first published last February, the Editor examined Hobsbawm's philosophy

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I was standing on a beach in Siberia when this book was recommended to me. The wavelets of a small artificial ocean made by damming the river Ob were splashing on the sand, and I was wondering out loud about the roots of the Soviet passion for making grand modifications to nature. "You need to read Kolakowski," said the person I was with. "He's got a great chapter about what he calls 'the Promethean motif' in Marxism – the idea that it's the destiny of humanity to steal fire from the gods and make the world whatever we want it to be."