Passion And Cunning

by Conor Cruise O'Brien

Conor Cruise O'Brien's brilliant and hugely controversial 1965 essay on the political convictions of W. B. Yeats is the title-piece for this superb 1988 collection of pieces on politics, religion, nationalism and terrorism.'O'Brien is a man of strong views, and he writes with verve and wit. Agree with him or not, one reads him with enjoyment.' Foreign Affairs'[ Passion and Cunning ] displays once again [O'Brien's] wonderful range of a beautiful command of the language, gentle wit and coruscating satire, shrewd political judgment and a raking critical power. O'Brien is, moreover, a critic against all-comers, his spiky guns pointing in all woe betide anyone incautious enough to presume that O'Brien is on their 'side'. . . O'Brien believes in all manner of good causes, but his own independence is finally what he cares about most.' R. W. Johnson, London Review of Books

Genres: Politics

384 pages, Paperback

First published March 10, 1988

About the author

Irish politician, writer, historian and academic.

Member of the Irish Parliament for the socialist Labour Party.

Member of the Northern Ireland Forum for the United Kingdom Unionist Party, which advocated direct rule of Northern Ireland from London.

Virulently anti-IRA.

Reviews

[Liam · Rating 1 out of 5]

An Irishman who is wrong about Ireland (and who, moreover, is essentially a traitor) is not likely to be right about anything else either. In the case of the late Conor Cruise O'Brien that is more or less the way things worked out. I probably don't disagree violently with everything he ever said, but I can't think of anything he ever said with which I actually do agree. In other words, I recommend leaving his books alone. Not only do I regret wasting my time reading this book, I actually regret that I picked it up out of the gutter, which I now realise was a perfectly appropriate place for it...

[Fionnbharr Rodgers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve read the chapter entitled ‘Bobby Sands,’ which one could reasonably assume might be about Bobby Sands; one would be wrong. The chapter starts off as a rebuke of a hagiographical biography of Sands, but is largely a critique on the history of Irish republicanism, from O’Brien’s narrow, southern viewpoint.

I remain unimpressed by O’Brien as a writer or a thinker; one might as well sit at home and read the Beano.

‘A terrorist is a man with a small gun; a statesman is a man with a large gun’ - Brendan Behan