• Corpus ID: 142951109

An Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski

@article{Thompson1973AnOL,
  title={An Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski},
  author={Edward Palmer Thompson},
  journal={Socialist Register},
  year={1973},
  volume={10}
}

• E. P. Thompson
• Published 18 March 1973
• Art
• Socialist Register

Dear Leszek Kolakowski, First, I must introduce myself, since this is an unusual kind of letter. You don't know me, but I know you well. This must be familiar enough to a man with an international " reputation. He must often be beset with the importunities of strangers. But my claim is more insistent and vulgar than that. I am the stranger who walks into the house, slaps you on the back, sits down at your ;able, and jests about your youthful escapades, on the pretext of a claim to distant relationship of which you know nothing. I am, in political terms, your mother's brother's stepson. I am an impossible and presumptuous guest, and an uninvited one-you may even suspect that I am an impostor-but the courtesies of kinship disallow you from throwing me from your house.