EP Thompson 1993 - Interviews with Historians.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

This has just appeared on YouTube. A 40 minute plus interview from1993 conducted by Penelope Corfield for the Institute of Historical Research, London. I think EP died in 1993 so this is obviously near the end. I met him a couple of times, once at Warwick and again with Dorothy when they were driving END', the European Nuclear Disarmament movement. We could really do with his kind now in so many ways, there's a total lack of both his political courage and his thought.

http://youtu.be/R00O0qnG99c?feature=shared

[french frank]

After Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism came EP Thomson's Making of the English Working Class as early(ish!) formative studies for me. Will watch with interest.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I've just discovered that the interview was in fact recorded in 1992 and that (Dr) Penelope Corfield is the niece of Christopher Hill, historian of the English Civil War etc etc. In another piece she says that EP Thompson once gave the most perfect historical lecture she has ever heard, building it from a Blake poem and back again.

[french frank]

I've just discovered that the interview was in fact recorded in 1992 and that (Dr) Penelope Corfield is the niece of Christopher Hill, historian of the English Civil War etc etc. In another piece she says that EP Thompson once gave the most perfect historical lecture she has ever heard, building it from a Blake poem and back again.

I can relate to that kind of academic. I read The Making in the mid-70s after I'd done some 'extra-mural' research on a small manuscript that I'd bought in a local auction sale and was able to identify the writer as one of the early 19th-c radicals. Thompson was where I filled in the historical background to the time - about which I knew nothing. He came over in the interview as a very independent-minded academic. Certainly in the field of French literature in my time Marxist critical theory was a thing, but I didn't find it came up with with very interesting criticism.

Later I remember having to sub a short item about the Muggletonians. They thought the sun was six miles away from the earth and God was 5ft tall.

[Mario]

Prof Penny Corfield and her partner Tony Belton, ex-Labour leader and current Councillor of Wandsworth Borough Council, were personal clients of mine, good friends, and both attended my wedding here.

They are both delightful people.

Our paths went in different directions, when I left the City of London to go and work in Hong Kong.

Their wedding present to us, a 17^th century antique map of the island of Malta, holds a special place in our hearts.

[Serial_Apologist]

These days I find Yannis Varoufakis to have the most plausible frameworkings for the political scene of today. Here he is interviewed on Labour's policy to expand military production, and why in his view they will fail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzMCt_ctaeI

[french frank]

These days I find Yannis Varoufakis to have the most plausible frameworkings for the political scene of today. Here he is interviewed on Labour's policy to expand military production, and why in his view they will fail.

I expect if I listened to the subsequent discussion all would become clear, but I think it starts off on the wrong foot by asserting that the increased defence spending has the aim of boosting the UK's economic growth.