After attending the local grammar school, Hobday received a scholarship to the Queen Mary University of London, where he took a first-class degree in history and English.
[1] Hobday spent the Second World War obtaining a master's degree in Cambridge, and did not serve in the military on medical grounds.
Over the course of the next decade, he became involved in a campaign to democratise the Communist Party, but left in 1957 after the Soviet invasion of Hungary.
[2] In retirement Hobday wrote many of his most remembered works, including the biography Edgell Rickword (1989); a survey of English poets in Florence, A golden ring (1997); and Elegy for a sergeant (2002), a poem in memory of his uncle who died in the First World War.
In 1979, Hobday published the classic essay, "Clouted Soon and Leather Aprons: Shakespear and the Egalitarian Tradition."