The socialist historians Eric Hobsbawm and E P Thompson both owned cottages in a fairly remote part of North Wales near Snowdonia, the Croesor Valley in the 1960s and 1970s. This was and is a practice much frowned on by many people that live there all the time, although of course the point is invariably made that it does boost the local economy (while making it more difficult for others to get homes to live in full time).
In her recent book Meet Me in Buenos Aires (2019)Marlene Hobsbawm gives some more detail about the summer holiday experience of both her partner Eric Hobsbawm and Dorothy and E P Thompson.
‘We usually went up to Wales during holidays, half-terms and all of August. We were always surrounded by friends.. in fact the whole area should have been called Cambridge in the Hills… Historians Edward Thompson and his wife Dorothy Thompson and family were neighbours in a farmhouse over the hill. They had been many visitors (often historians from the USA) and people liked to say one could hear more typewriters clicking than birds chirping in our valley.
The detail of Christmas is a little harder to find. Hobsbawm had a family Christmas Eve in North London and entertained academics who were in town on Christmas Day. After this the Hobsbawms headed to North Wales for the post-Christmas and New Year period.
The details of what E P and Dorothy Thompson (and children) did at Christmas is harder still to discover. Unlike Hobsbawm Thompson wrote no autobiography- perhaps he would have done had he not died at 69 in 1993- and his correspondence is closed at the Bodelian.
However we do know that the Thompson’s had a New Year party and the Hobsbawms attended. Both Hobsbawm’s Interesting Times and Richard J Evans biography make reference to them walking in wet and windy weather along a track to the Thompson’s cottage- having parked. On one occasion the wind was such that the door of the Hobsbawm’s car was damaged.
Unfortunately what was discussed is unknown. Had social media existed we would almost certainly have had some idea.
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