I don't care tuppence whether I'm forced into a leadership position or not. I'd much sooner not.

Thompson was born in Oxford to Methodist missionary parents: His father Edward John Thompson (1886-1946) was a poet and admirer of the Nobel-prize winning poet Tagore. Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Criticism
Leszek Kołakowski wrote a very harsh criticism of Thompson in his 1974 essay "My Correct Views on Everything" picking apart Thompson's left-wing views.

He also publiE. P. Thompsond influential biographies of William Morris (1955) and (posthumously) William Blake (1993) and was a prolific journalist and essayist. Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the late 1950s.