Edward Arthur Thompson FBA (22 May 1914 – 1 January 1994) was an Irish-born British Marxist historian of classics and medieval studies.

[1] His father, Robert James Thompson, who was of Irish descent, was the son of a weaver and worked for the National Health Insurance.

[6] Already prepared to enter the Second World War with an enlistment in the British Army, Thompson secured an appointment at the University of Swansea in 1941 through the help of his friend Benjamin Farrington.

[4] His first book, Ammianus Marcellinus (1947), played a major role in reviving the study of late antiquity in the United Kingdom.

[7][5] He was considered the leading scholar in the United Kingdom in the field, with the University of Nottinhgham emerging as one of its principal centers of study.

[5] Distinguished members of his department at this time included Harold Mattingly, W. Charlmers, G. R. Watson, Mollie Whittaker, A. H. Sommerstein and J. W.

[9] In 1951, perhaps inspired by Farrington, Thompson published the book A Roman Reformer and Inventor, which examined the anonymous author of the De rebus bellicis.

He attributed increasing social stratification among the Germanic peoples of the early centuries AD to the influence of the Roman Empire.

[13] Thompson's reliance on literary evidence and aim to present a coherent account of history, distinguished him from many more recent historians, who are heavily influenced by critical theory and consider primary sources unreliable.

[15] Edward Thompson ... was the leading scholar of his generation on the history of the Germanic migrations ... His academic achievement was to apply modern historical analysis to the study of the Germanic tribes, escaping the influence of 19th-century romantic myths ...[12] Until his retirement in 1979, Thompson served as the first Chairman of the Editorial Board of the scholarly journal Nottingham Medieval Studies, founded by Lewis Thorpe in 1957.

On the death of A. H. M. Jones in 1970, Thompson was made Chairman of the academy's committee supervising the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire project.

After his retirement Thompson spent a year at the University of Wisconsin, during which he produced four major papers which were later printed in the collection Romans and Barbarians: The Decline of the Western Empire (1982).

[8] Thompson's revulsion towards Nazism, and his rejection of the strict Presbyterianism of his family, made him receptive towards Marxist ideology, which was popular among intellectuals in the 1930s.

[4] Influenced by Benjamin Farrington and the poet Roger Roughton, Thompson joined the Communist Party of Great Britain by 1941.

[9] He was strongly opposed to the Soviet handling of the Prague Spring, and criticised British policy in Northern Ireland, particularly sectarian violence.