At the age of 94 Historian Eric Hobsbawm's new book 'How to change the world: Marx and Marxism'

The publication of How To Change the World may help to set the record straight and not before time: it is his 16th book and appears, impressively, in his 94th year. Although the book is largely made up of previously published material, much of it has never appeared in English and some of it has been revised and updated. The "tales" of the subtitle may be a nervous publisher's attempt to make the contents sound more beguiling to readers who might be thought to be deterred by "essays" or "studies", but fortunately the term does not in this case signal colourful biographical chat or off-beat narratives. The essays are analytical and synoptic and none the worse for that their sheer intellectual quality makes them more compelling than any sexed-up "tales" could be.