Who is Eric Hobsbawm from The Invention of Tradition and what is their importance?

Eric Hobsbawm, the author of The Invention of Tradition, is an important British Marxist historian. Hobsbawm spent most of his career as a lecturer in history at Birkbeck College and the University of London between 1959 and 1982. Of significance, is Hobsbawm's past activism as a communist in Britain. Hobsbawm's doctoral work concerned the history of the British Fabian society, a democratic communist advocacy organization and was a member of the Association of Socialist Pupils, becoming a member of the Communist party in 1936 and consistently defending the Soviet Union from any and all criticism until its collapse. Thus, his commitment to a Marxist philosophy was unyielding.