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Roger Morgan¡¯s review of the late Eric Hobsbawm¡¯s Fractured Times: Culture and Society in the 20th Century (¡°Fragmentation of a framework¡±, Books, 11 April) remarks on the historian¡¯s ¡°long-held Marxist viewpoint; bourgeois capitalism was in any case doomed to disappear, giving way to some form of socialism¡±.

Yet Morgan also notes Hobsbawm¡¯s comment that ¡°actually it is inappropriate to ask a historian what culture will look like in the next millennium. We are experts in the past. We are not concerned with the future.¡± Is this not the most extraordinary retreat from the confident Marxian prediction of revolution?

Nigel Probert
Porthmadog