The Making of the English Working Class

Thompson’s work combines passion and intellect, the gifts of the poet, the narrator and the analyst – Eric Hobsbawm * Independent *A dazzling vindication of the lives and aspirations of the then - and now once again - neglected culture of working-class England – Martin Kettle * Observer *Superbly readable … a moving account of the culture of the self-taught in an age of social and intellectual deprivation – Asa Briggs * Financial Times *An event not merely in the writing of English history but in the politics of our century – Michael Foot * Times Literary Supplement *The greatest of our socialist historians – Terry Eagleton * New Statesman *

E. P. Thompson was born in 1924 and read history at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, graduating in 1946. An academic, writer and acclaimed historian, his first major work was a biography of William Morris. The Making of the English Working Class was instantly recognized as a classic on its publication in 1963 and secured his position as one of the leading social historians of his time. Thompson was also a leading figure in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He died in 1993.