Podcast Summary
Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Ashley
Episode: Michael Braddick, “Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian” (Verso Books, 2025)
Date: December 22, 2025
Guest: Mike Braddick (Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford)
Episode Overview
This episode features historian Mike Braddick discussing his new biography of Christopher Hill, the renowned Marxist historian of 17th-century England. The conversation dives deep into Hill’s intellectual evolution, his methodological ambitions, and his complex relationship with Marxism, literature, and the historical profession. Braddick’s work seeks to recover not just the limitations, but also the ambitions of Hill’s radical reimagining of the English past.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
1. Genesis of the Book & Hill’s Enduring Influence
[01:46–03:01]
- Braddick reveals that his engagement began as an attempt to “clear historiographical ground” for his own research on the 17th century.
- Hill’s work is portrayed as inescapable for anyone dealing with this period because of decades-long scholarly debate around his interpretations.
- What started as academic groundwork soon became an exploration of Hill’s rich and remarkable life.
“I really wanted to have a better understanding of what Hill was trying to do and not simply the limitations of what he did ... I then discovered that it’s just a really interesting life.” — Mike Braddick [02:39]
2. Early Biography: Methodism, Moral Seriousness, and Literature
[03:01–08:37]
- Hill’s upbringing in Methodism is central: Braddick emphasizes the “moral seriousness” and sense of hope for societal improvement that Hill carried from Methodism to Marxism.
- The influence of literature: English public schools fostered abstract thinking through literature rather than philosophy, shaping not just Hill but contemporaries like Hobsbawm and Thompson.
"He thought that by writing he was intervening in the present and helping to shape paths to a different future ... And I think that kind of seriousness comes from his Methodism." — Mike Braddick [03:37]
- Hill’s turn to Marxism was not through economic critique but through a search for a theoretical system offering hope and purpose stronger than literature did.
"...he found a disjunction between the things he’d been brought up to believe in ... and the world of depression England ... and his first move was to try and understand that through modernist literary authors ... but he found that unsatisfactory ... So he moved through literary modernism to Marxism.” — Mike Braddick [07:32]
3. Humanistic Marxism & Focus on Class
[08:37–12:22]
- Hill’s Marxism, Braddick contends, was essentially humanist—less about political economy, more about human flourishing and critiquing societal structures enforcing bourgeois values.
- Hill believed England was uniquely positioned as the first “bourgeois society”—his English focus, while internationally minded, refigured exceptionalism.
"He wants a casteless society ... It’s a terrible irony that he thought that’s what the USSR was offering..." — Mike Braddick [10:38]
"He thought England was the first bourgeois society ... It is an English exceptionalism refigured as the first bourgeois society." — Mike Braddick [12:01]
4. Historiographical Methods: Sources, Class, and Revolution
[13:57–16:31]
- Hill used new sources, especially cheap print from the 17th century, to access wider social viewpoints, but initially still worked within established constitutional paradigms.
- Over time, Hill’s work shifted from political and constitutional focus to individual experiences during periods of social and cultural conflict.
"He engaged with the print stuff much more than previous historians, because he was interested in the world outside the court... it was primarily about the role of class in each of those constitutional resolutions." — Mike Braddick [14:16]
5. Materialism vs. Idealism: Revisionist Debates
[19:53–23:31]
- Hill critiqued both the idealist tradition (SR Gardiner) and faced subsequent revisionist critiques accusing him of “materialist determinism,” especially regarding religious radicalism.
- Braddick defends Hill, claiming his aim was to link ideas to their social bases, not to erase the role of conscience or ideology.
"He didn’t believe ideas worked independently of power of their social basis ... you have to explain what the social and political influence of that idea rests on." — Mike Braddick [21:13]
6. Religion, Capitalism, and Methodological Distinctions
[23:31–25:43]
- Compared to Weber and Tawney, Hill focused less on individual psychology and more on which social groups were receptive to Puritanism.
- He argued that capitalism helped create conditions for Protestant ethic, inverting the chronology of prior theorists.
"Hill operates much more on the basis of a group—which groups in society are receptive to Puritanism and what is it about their way of life that makes them receptive?" — Mike Braddick [24:28]
7. Debates within the Left: Determinism and Social History
[29:03–32:45]
- Braddick examines Hill’s disagreements with contemporaries like Peter Laslett (Cambridge Group), stemming from Laslett’s demographic determinism regarding the nuclear family as the social base.
- Also notes a broader tension in social history: should historical focus remain on transformative politics, which Hill favored, or move toward long-term social structures, as with the Cambridge group.
"Hill didn’t like the determinism ... They argue the nuclear family predominated, and from that all other social relationships flowed ... Hill did find that reductive..." — Mike Braddick [29:23]
8. Marxism, the Soviet Union, and Hill’s Reputation
[32:45–37:29]
- Braddick reflects on Hill’s political commitments, including an anecdote about his medical care in the USSR as a metaphor for perceived 'deafness' to Soviet critiques.
- The episode explores how Cold War politics and the Thatcher era politicized academic critiques of Hill, often associating critique of Hill with critique of Marxism itself.
- Braddick advocates dissecting these layered critiques and understanding Hill in both academic and political terms.
"For a lot of Hill’s career, the critique of Hill was a critique of Marxism rather than a critique of Hill’s way of understanding this particular problem ... I’m trying to separate it at a moment where we’re in another culture war." — Mike Braddick [36:23]
9. Hill among his Peers: Hobsbawm, Hilton, and the Establisment
[38:54–45:33]
- Braddick contrasts Hill’s treatment with Hobsbawm and Hilton, noting Hill was often attacked more harshly, arguably because he wrote a radical history of England—a national, not global, focus—and held establishment positions.
- Hill’s “insider-outsider” position, especially as Master of Balliol, amplified public scrutiny compared to those able to retain a self-image of outsider (e.g., Hobsbawm).
"He did repent [his Stalinism] ... His Stalinism was a bit shocking. ... Hill was really consistently under attack, critical attack, whereas Hobsbawm ... became a national institution..." — Mike Braddick [40:01]
10. Limits of Hill's English Focus and Total Historical Ambition
[45:33–54:47]
- Hill was equipped to write comparatively—he read multiple languages and published on the Russian Revolution—but his main focus remained tightly English, influenced by his upbringing and Oxford’s academic culture.
- Braddick discusses Hill’s ambition for a “total history,” which tried to unite intellectual, economic, and political analysis, and laments the later siloing and specialization of historical disciplines.
- He questions whether Hill's aversion to explicit theory limited his adaptability and flexibility, especially as the New Left emerged.
"All the way through his career he said, the thing about Marxist history is this total history, everything connects to everything ... the ambition to connect them and think what it all amounts to is an important one." — Mike Braddick [53:32]
Memorable Quotes
- On Moral Seriousness & Marxism:
"He wasn’t just an academic historian. I don’t think he ever saw his work simply as kind of moving academic pieces around on the academic chess board." — Mike Braddick [04:56] - On Sources and Class:
"He ended up using quite different sources, and he read a lot in the cheap prints of the 17th century ... It was primarily about the role of class in each of those constitutional resolutions." — Mike Braddick [14:16] - On Revisionist Critiques:
"I think it’s a mischaracterization of him to say that he’s not interested in individual conscience and ideas and so on ... he was clearly opposed to idealism and he wanted. But he was also clear that he wasn’t a materialist." — Mike Braddick [21:34] - On the Totality of History:
"The thing about Marxist history is this total history, everything connects to everything. And I think that's a good thing for us to think about." — Mike Braddick [54:43]
Notable Timestamps
- [01:46] — Origins of Braddick’s interest in Hill
- [03:37] — The role of Methodism in Hill’s intellectual formation
- [08:37] — Early Hill and "humanistic" Marxism
- [12:22] — Hill’s choice of England as his focal point
- [14:16] — Sources and class analysis in the English Revolution
- [21:03] — Hill’s methodological response to idealism and revisionism
- [24:20] — Contrasts with Weber and Tawney on Protestantism and capitalism
- [29:03] — Disagreement with Laslett and the demographic determinism debate
- [32:45] — Separating Hill’s politics from his historical practice
- [40:01] — Hill, Hobsbawm, and the politics of historical reputation
- [45:33] — Hill’s limited comparative perspective
- [53:06] — The legacy and lessons of Hill’s unified historical approach
- [54:57] — Closing thanks and reflections
Conclusion
Ashley and Mike Braddick’s conversation offers a nuanced and compelling portrait of Christopher Hill as both a product and a critic of his times—an historian driven by moral seriousness and ambition for total history, yet marked by the constraints of method, politics, and professional context. Braddick’s biography draws out the moral, intellectual, and political tensions at Hill’s core, offering much to historians and general readers alike interested in the ongoing battles over history’s meaning and methods.