Richard J. Evans FBA, FRSL, FRHistS – författare

At the time of his death at the age of 95, Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) was the most famous historian in the world. His books were translated into more than fifty languages and he was as well known in Brazil and Italy as he was in Britain and the United States. His writings have had a huge and lasting effect on the practice of history. More than half a century after it appeared, his books remain a staple of university reading lists.He had an extraordinarily long life, with interests covering many countries and many cultures, ranging from poetry to jazz, literature to politics. He experienced life not only as a university teacher but also as a young Communist in the Weimar Republic, a radical student at Cambridge, a political activist, an army conscript, a Soho 'man about town', a Hampstead intellectual, a Cambridge don, an influential journalist, a world traveller, and finally a Grand Old Man of Letters.In A Life in History, Richard Evans tells the story of Hobsbawm as an academic, but also as witness to history itself, and of the twentieth century's major political and intellectual currents. Eric not only wrote and spoke about many of the great issues of his time, but participated in many of them too, from Communist resistance to Hitler to revolution in Cuba, where he acted as an interpreter for Che Guevara. He was a prominent part of the Jazz scene in Soho in the late 1950s and his writings played a pivotal role in the emergence of New Labour in the late 1980s and early 1990s.This, the first biography of Eric Hobsbawm, is far more than a study of a professional historian. It is a study of an era.

A bullet misses its target in Sarajevo, a would-be Austrian painter gets into the Viennese academy, Lord Halifax becomes British prime minister in 1940: seemingly minor twists of fate on which world-shaking events might have hinged.Alternative history has long been the stuff of parlour games, war-gaming and science fiction, but over the past few decades it has become a popular stomping ground for serious historians. Richard J. Evans now turns a critical, slightly jaundiced eye on the subject. Altered Pasts examines the intellectual fallout from historical counterfactuals. Most importantly, Evans takes counterfactual history seriously, looking at the insights, pitfalls and intellectual implications of changing one thread in the weave of history.

In this fascinating and enlightening collection of essays, one of the most important historians of our time reflects on the ways our understanding of Nazi Germany have been transformed in the twenty-first century. Richard Evans examines new historical perspectives on the Third Reich, such as showing how it is increasingly viewed in a broader international - even global - context, as part of the age of imperialism. He investigates how Nazi policies in Europe drew on Hitler's image of the American colonisation of the Great Plains, how companies like Volkswagen and Krupp operated on a global scale and - perhaps most controversial of all - how historians have come to see the Holocaust not as a unique historical event but as a genocide with parallels and similarities in other countries and at other times. THE THIRD REICH IN HISTORY AND MEMORY explores how these new perspectives have brought dividends, but also offers a critical perspective on the ways they are changing our perception of the period.THE THIRD REICH IN HISTORY AND MEMORY, in Richard Evans' characteristically compelling style, shows us that memory has to be subjected to the close scrutiny of history if it is to stand up to examination, while history's implications for collective cultural memories of Nazism must be spelled out with precision as well as with passion.