he found his intel-lec-tual home in the Depart-ment of His-tory at Birk-beck Col-lege where he was based from 1947 onwards, becom-ing the Col-lege Pres-id-ent until his death. Birk-beck, which is part of the Uni-ver-sity of Lon-don, already had a strong tra-di-tion for being polit-ic-ally rad-ical and an intel-lec-tual power-house (other fam-ous teach-ers included J. D. Bernal and Ros-alind Frank-lin, both fam-ous crys-tal-lo-graph-ers, the poet T. S. Eliot, Robert Brown-ing the great clas-si-cist and cam-paigner against the Col-on-els dic-tat-or-ship and the polit-ical the-or-ist Paul Hirst amongst oth-ers). At Birk-beck, Eric forged the rad-ical his-tory that was to make his name. He was pas-sion-ate about the work-ing class and cham-pioned social his-tory before it became fash-ion-able. He fam-ously propag-ated the idea that nations are "inven-ted tra-di-tions" and brought to life the voices of work-ing people, includ-ing ban-dits, fact-ory work-ers, and trade unionists. Hobs-bawm was a Renais-sance man, like Marx him-self. He spoke seven lan-guages, his know-ledge was encyc-lo-paedic and his memory of people, events and ideas immense. Meet-ing Eric was a little daunt-ing. His aus-tere gaunt face and stoop-ing frame gave the impres-sion of a rather remote and cold man. It was not true. On Bastille Day 1936, with the Pop-u-lar Front in power, he drove through Paris in a trance and drank and danced till dawn. He pro-posed to his second wife Mar-lene at a Bob Dylan con-cert in the 60s and wrote under the pseud-onym Fran-cis New-ton a monthly jazz column for the New States-man for ten years. He was