To many, E.P. Thompson is the writer of the Cold War, the outstanding voice of heart and reason, crying out against the obscenity and unreason of the war. One of Britain's leading Marxist historians, he re-wrote our concept of history in The Making of the English Working Class, and made major contributions to political protest in such works as The Poverty of Theory, Writing by Candlelight, and Protest and Survive. His poetry has been overshadowed by the political writings, yet they exhibit the same incisive and spellbinding qualities. In the poems, Thompson's vision encompasses tenderness and sardonic anger, rage and hatred, epic grandeur and grand wit. For Thompson, as for T.S Eliot, the language of history and the language of politics were one and the same. His poetry too, renews old speech to keep it speakable.