Eric Hobsbawm & E P Thompson’s August holidays, the imperial angle
Late August is a time perhaps to consider holidays and for socialist historians where people like E P Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm went on holiday has some historical interest.
Both Thompson and Hobsbawm had holiday cottages in the Croesor area of North Wales from the late 1960s. They were leased from Clough Williams-Ellis best known for Portmeirion. He was keen to encourage a range of people into the area.
However it was predominantly Welsh speaking which Thompson and Hobsbawm were not. Hobsbawm (and perhaps his partner and family) enjoyed walking in Snowdonia. Also nearby was Blaneau which in the late nineteenth century had been a centre of slate quarrying leading to the development of railways and shipping to move the slate.
Hobsbawm while focusing on nationalism and imperialism does not seem to have picked up on this angle.
As Richard J Evans notes in his biography of Hobsbawm, from the early 1990s the rise of militant Welsh nationalism saw a significant number of attacks on holiday homes in North Wales that were left empty for much of the year. Hobsbawm gave up his lease and moved south to a property in Hay on Wye where he became a regular speaker at and eventually President of the Hay Literary Festival.
E P Thompson died in 1993 so this didn’t apply in his case unfortunately
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