ABSTRACT
The family had held the local record for being most consistently unsuccessful in business, but Eric Hobsbawm was their best investment with no premiums or odds on. Eric speaks wistfully of these days when he combined the brutality of the established code with the advanced morality of one who handed out leaflets at street corners. Those were the days, and the nights weren't bad either. Eric had a large and vulgar patriotism for England, which he considered in weak moments as his spiritual home. In it little Eric was being accurately and efficiently born into a milieu which suited his prose style down to the ground. Little bits of the entire world were to be found in Eric. His grandfather had lit out of Russia way back in the 1870s to become a cabinet maker in the East End of London. Assorted uncles had gone to America and Switzerland.
