Historiography and the British Marxist Historians (Paperback)

Academic and popular interest in British history is flourishing, with unprecedented numbers of students, books and journals, as well as audiences for television presentations. Yet as the end of the century approaches, a pervasive feeling of historiographical malaise is also apparent, expressed in the notions that history has very likely reached an endpoint and that writing about it is often hardly to be distinguished from imaginative fiction.;This paradox is examined in this book in relation to the school of historians who emerged from the Historians' Group of the Communist Party. Andy Croft and Harvey Kaye provide discussions of varying aspects of the work and career of E.P. Thompson. Eric Hobsbawm's recent and celebrated "Age of Extremes" is discussed by the author himself. Raymond Williams was a historian as much as a literary critic with roots in the same communist background: Steve Woodhams provides a reassessment of his contribution.