John Edward Christopher Hill, usually known simply as Christopher Hill, February 6, 1912–February 23, 2003 was an English Marxist historian and author of textbooks.
Hill was born into a prosperous middle class family — his father was a solicitor — of Methodists in York. He attended St Peter's School, York. While he was still at school, two history tutors from Balliol College, Oxford University heard of Hill's ability and recruited him.
Before he ...
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John Edward Christopher Hill, usually known simply as Christopher Hill, February 6, 1912–February 23, 2003 was an English Marxist historian and author of textbooks.
Hill was born into a prosperous middle class family — his father was a solicitor — of Methodists in York. He attended St Peter's School, York. While he was still at school, two history tutors from Balliol College, Oxford University heard of Hill's ability and recruited him.
Before he went up to Oxford in 1931, Hill had a prolonged holiday in Freiburg, Germany, where he witnessed the rise of the Nazi Party; he later said it contributed significantly to the radicalisation of his politics. In 1932, Hill won a first-class honours degree and won an All Souls Fellowship two years later. Whilst at Balliol, Hill became a committed Marxist and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1935, he undertook a prolonged trip to the Soviet Union, where he learnt Russian and studied Soviet historical scholarship, particularly that...
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