Thompson, E P

Thompson, E(dward) P(almer)

(born Feb. 3, 1924—died Aug. 28, 1993, Upper Wick, Worcester, Eng.) British historian. He served in Italy in World War II and taught at the universities of Leeds (1948–65) and Warwick (1965–71). He left the Communist Party in 1956 when Soviet troops crushed the Hungarian uprising but remained a Marxist and socialist all his life. His best-known work is The Making of the English Working Class (1963), an acclaimed study of the period 1780–1832. Among his other books is Whigs and Hunters (1975). From the late 1970s he devoted much of his time to the antinuclear movement.