Eric Hobsbawm, Marxist who advised Blair, dies at 95

Tributes were being paid today to Eric Hobsbawm, one of the leading historians of modern times who has died aged 95.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said Hobsbawm was “an extraordinary historian, a man passionate about his politics and a great friend of my family”.

He added: “His works brought hundreds of years of British history to hundreds of thousands of people. He brought history out of the ivory tower. He was not simply an academic, he cared deeply about the political direction of the country.”

Hobsbawm, who died at the Royal Free Hospital after succumbing to pneumonia, was a lifelong Marxist whose four-volume chronicle of the 19th and 20th centuries was described by writer Niall Ferguson as “the best starting point I know for anyone who wishes to begin studying modern history”. Born to Jewish parents in 1917, the year of the Russian revolution, Hobsbawm was orphaned and grew up in Berlin with his uncle, where he witnessed first hand the rise of Hitler before his fleeing to London in 1933.

After gaining a PhD from Cambridge, in 1948 he published the first of more than 30 books. His most recent work, How To Change The World was published only last year and he had finished another due to be released the next.

In April, he told fellow historian Simon Schama he would like to be remembered as “somebody who not only kept the flag flying, but who showed that by waving it you can actually achieve something, if only good and readable books”. He was dubbed “Neil Kinnock’s guru” in the Nineties after criticising the Labour Party for failing to adapt and is regarded as having been an influential figure in the birth of New Labour, although he later became disenchanted with Tony Blair.

Announcing the news, his daughter Julia issued a statement saying: “He will be greatly missed not only by his wife of 50 years, Marlene, and his three children, seven grandchildren and great grandchild, but also by his many thousands of readers and students around the world.”

He became a fellow of the British Academy in 1978 and was awarded the Companion of Honour in 1998.