I think that the U.S. does have this very much more open attitude, and I admire it very much and I think it's very important to the world. But the information and the discussion sometimes come too late, after the effective decision has been made.

Thompson was born in Oxford to Methodist missionary parents: His father Edward John Thompson (1886-1946) was a poet and admirer of the Nobel-prize winning poet Tagore. Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Criticism
Leszek Kołakowski wrote a very harsh criticism of Thompson in his 1974 essay "My Correct Views on Everything" picking apart Thompson's left-wing views.

He also publiE. P. Thompsond influential biographies of William Morris (1955) and (posthumously) William Blake (1993) and was a prolific journalist and essayist. Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the late 1950s.