Eric Hobsbawm was a pioneer in introducing new methods and perspectives in the historian's craft and breaking the bounds of the discipline. His intellectual contributions to our understanding of the world, even in contexts far removed from what he studied and wrote about, are exceptional. However, his academic brilliance was scarred by his unquestioning loyalty to the Communist Party of Great Britain, which made him compromise academically when writing on the history of the 20th century. Yet, despite this fl aw, his intellectual achievements are staggering.
