Writers and Politics

by Conor Cruise O'Brien

Arguably Conor Cruise O'Brien's most influential and admired book was this brilliant collection of essays - on history, literature and public affairs - first published in 1965.

'I can still remember the excitement with which I discovered a copy of Writers and Politics, in a provincial library in Devonshire thirty years ago. Nobody who tries to write about either of those subjects, or about "the bloody crossroads" where they have so often met, can disown a debt to the Cruiser.' Christopher Hitchens, London Review of Books

'When a liberal can write such pieces as "Mercy and Mercenaries", "Journal de Combat", "Varieties of Anti-Communism", "A New Yorker Critic", and "Generation of Saints", an important voice has returned to our culture.' Raymond Williams, Guardian

318 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

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

[Solomon Bloch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will definitely have to come back and reread some of these essays. Unluckily, I only had background information enough to understand some fraction of the essays in the book, it being from 1965 and all, but I learned a lot. Great insight on Orwell (some of the classic lines now, like contrasting the line from Shooting an Elephant about the feeling of stabbing a monk and his other work), great insight on Camus specifically his review of The Fall. When I read through a cluster on Cold War history, I will revisit his Cold War documents. Such as his essay on Whitaker Chambers, which was very interesting although I didn’t quite understand.

Certainly deserves to be read.

[Bob Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I no longer have my copies of States of Ireland and the Edmund Burke biography, and I sorely miss them, but this collection of occasional pieces is going to sustain me for a while. O'Brien treats James Joyce, Communism (which still had another two decades to run when this book appeared), Jean-Paul Sartre, Dwight Macdonald and many more. The tone is always urbane, sometimes quietly cynical, and the evaluations of writers and movements are always just.