In Eric Hobsbawm: The Consolations of History, a new film for the LRB, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Hobsbawm’s life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s Soho and the makings of New Labour, taking in Italian bandits, Peruvian peasant movements and the development of nationalism in the modern world along the way, with help from the assiduous observations of Mi5. The film features contributions from Richard J. Evans, Frances Stonor Saunders, Marlene Hobsbawm, Donald Sassoon, John Foot and Stefan Collini, and Hobsbawm himself in extensive archive footage.