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