Eric Hobsbawm’s death last year robbed us of the last of that generation of Marxist scholars who did so much to transform the writing of history in the 1950s and 1960s – and in Hobsbawm’s case into the first decade of this century. There have been many tributes. The purpose of this essay is not to survey the full breadth of his contribution which, in terms of period, geography and scope, was characteristically more far-ranging than that of Hill, Thompson, Saville, Hilton or even Kiernan. It is to focus on just one central, though perplexing, aspect. This is Hobsbawm’s understanding of Marx and Marxism and its relevance to his approach to social history.