Their Class Struggles News Today

I met Tom Nairn, who has died at the age of 90, only once, when I was 17 or 18 and he came to speak at a meeting at my university. I remember wondering how someone even more shy, awkward, and dishevelled than I was could have become such a high-profile influence on the left. Nairn wrote not awkwardly but exuberantly, floridly, splendidly.