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Hobsbawm: A Life in History
BBC Radio 4, 8pm - 9pm BBC Radio 4 LW
In an interview recorded at his London home in Hampstead, the historian Eric Hobsbawm, still working at 94, talks to Simon Schama about his turbulent childhood in Europe, his Marxist views and the role of history and the historian.
Schama is charming and at ease in his older colleague’s company, even wandering a little too far off-microphone at times, and interpolates excerpts from earlier on-air appearances by Hobsbawm with Kirsty Wark, Melvyn Bragg et al.
As to Hobsbawm’s seemingly unshakeable faith in the Russian Communist utopia, Schama coyly leaves this question to Sue Lawley in a 1995 recording from Desert Island Discs.
About this programme
Simon Schama interviews historian Eric Hobsbawm about his life and work, including his four-volume history of the 19th and 20th centuries, which is still used by students today. The pair discuss Hobsbawm's turbulent childhood, being orphaned, and his eventual move to England, where he won a scholarship to Cambridge, and how he co-founded the Communist Party Historians Group and the journal Past & Present.
Presenter
Simon Schama
Contributor
Eric Hobsbawm
[url=http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/qbksv/hobsbawm-a-life-in-history[/url]
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