O'Brien is the living embodiment of what it is to be a polymath and a man of letters. The range of his work as statesman, academic and author is rivalled in recent history only by Malraux. This is a magnificent memoir of an exemplary life.

The most striking characteristic of O'Brien the statesman is his extraordinary courage - physical courage, not merely the willingness to express a controversial view - in expounding the essential moral difference between democracy and terrorism, and the need for a democratic polity to defend itself against those who would undermine it by violence. One need not agree with all of O'Brien's policy conclusions - an unyielding rejection of the deeply flawed Good Friday agreement, and a curious addendum in this volume that nonetheless Ulster Protestants might have to reconcile themselves one day to a united Ireland - to be thankful for, and to benefit from, his lesson that the advocates of revolutionary violence stand in defiance of the values of a civilised and liberal order.

The recurrent theme of the book, reflecting O'Brien's lifelong fascination with the subject, is the interaction of nationalism and religion. He is deeply critical of the cult of revolutionary nationalism in his native Ireland, and analyses with great insight the sources of nationalist mythology. He is similarly knowledgeable of the connections between Jewish nationalism and religion, and takes the - by now, unfortunately rare - position of a Gentile with a principled and liberal sympathy for the cause of Israel.

It is, in short, a consistently thought-provoking book by a man of courage, literary skill and outstanding intellect. Highly recommended.

I thought I had a pretty good idea of the history until I read this book.
It is truly one of the most interesting books I have read. I wish it was still in print and easily available.

Irish Historian Conor Cruise O'Brien's seminal work on the saga of Zionism and the Jewish state remains a potent and important read nearly two decades after its original publication. O'Brien lays out the Jewish side of the conflict in an extraordinarily readable manner, as well as making the reader truly understand the Jewish perspective. It is a shame that there has been no such effort to tell the Arab side (although perhaps Rashid Khalidi comes the closest). O'Brien sets out to trace the rise of the Zionist movement in Europe, and finds Zionism as rooted in European anti-Semitism, which especially after 1881, became both pervasive and flexible: European anti-Semitism could based either on Christian dogma, or non-religious "scientific" racism, which viewed the Jews as a separate, and inferior people. This dreary situation led to the Jewish nationalist movement, and O'Brien tells its story lucidly and coherently, using many primary documents to bolster his case. O'Brien then shifts his focus from Europe to Palestine, where as a result of European anti-Semitism, Jews began large-scale immigration and land purchases which caused friction with the local Arabs, a conflict that continues until today. But the focus is not only the conflict, but the state of Israel, and the second half of the book deals with Sephardic Jewish immigration (The Second Israel), the Arab minority in Israel, as well as the continued battles with its Arab neighbors. Nor is O'Brien insensitive to the plight of the Palestinians, stating that "The Palestinian Arabs have every right to say that they are the indirect and innocent victims of what happened to the Jews in Europe."

So well has O'Brien's book held up that many of the predictions he made in 1985 have now come to pass. O'Brien explains why the siege exists, and why it will continue to: "Israel cannot be other than what it is...Israel is not free to be other than the Jewish State in Palestine, and that the Jewish State, once in possession of Jerusalem, is not capable of relinquishing that city. The Muslim world is also not free to be other than what it is, and is certainly incapable of acquiescing openly, fully, and voluntarily to a Jewish State in Palestine, with Arab subjects, and its capital in Jerusalem. It seems to follow that the siege will continue, in some form, into an indefinite future" (p. 656). How have these predictions been borne out? Shortly afterwards, it seemed that O'Brien may have been wrong. The Intifidah led to the Oslo Peace Process, and from 1993-1999, optimism ruled the day, with the end of the conflict seemingly in sight. But the two sides failed to reach an agreement at the final status negotiations at Camp David in July 2000, mainly over the issue of Jerusalem. The only reason for the success of the peace process until that time was the fact that they had not dealt with the main issues, agreeing on smaller items, while the major questions loomed overhead. Shortly afterwards, violence returned to the region and has continued to this day. And the prospects for a future accord? According to the author they are not be good. O'Brien sums up both the past and the future best when he says that: "The Jews had recovered Jerusalem, after nearly two thousand years, through a train of efforts and events so strange and unprecedented as to appear to some almost miraculous, and to others literally miraculous. To expect the Jews, having thus again come into possession of Jerusalem, to hand over the Old City, with the Wall of the Temple, to an Arab Power, or to an international authority, is to expect what cannot be." (p. 651). O'Brien concludes his text by stating that "what is not in sight is an end to the siege."
He might as well have been writing today.

I loved this extremely easy (albeit long) to read book.
I marvel at O'brien's skill as a writer, researcher and author.
To me it read as a fascinating adventure story and was extremely meaningful. I wish it were still in print.

My recommendation was for the Oxford rather than the Everyman edition, edited by L.G. Mitchell. I apologise for this error.

I personally find, overall, that other persons writing
about and analyzing Burke and his views tend to be a bit
more interesting and compelling, than Burke himself in
his prose.
I do not consider myself a "conservative" -- in the
sense that that is a political agenda or mindset, nor
a reactionary. There is much in academics and political
philosophy which tends to want to damn by labels -- and
by putting ideas into boxes, filing, and forgetting...rather
than listening to, or thoughtfully considering.
One can believe in classic values, and find his
grounding in classical philosophy without being a
rigid reactionary or even a doctrinaire conservative.
So, when Burke speaks with the speech of the
Ancients and espouses classical warnings and
remonstrances about the necessity of restraint
and careful consideration, one can agree with him.
And, as the editor and author of the "Introduction"
to the Penguin Classics edition, Conor Cruise O'Brien,
points out, there is that of the prophet in Burke as
well, since he published these REFLECTIONS in 1790,
before the Reign of Terror in 1793, yet he correctly
foresees the excesses to which the French Revolution
will proceed in its unchecked course.
One of the best quotes which I like very much from
this work follows:
"When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see
a strong principle at work; and this, for a while,
is all I can possibly know of it. The wild GAS, the
fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to
suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is
a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and
until we see something deeper than the agitation of
a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably
sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men
upon a blessing, that they have really received one.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver;
and adulation is not of more service to the people
than to kings. I should therefore suspend my
congratulations on the new liberty of France, until
I was informed how it had been combined with
government; with public force; with the discipline
and obedience of armies; with the collection of an
effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality
and religion; with the solidity of property; with
peace and order: with civil and social MANNERS. All
these (in their way) are good things too; and, without
them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and
is not likely to continue long."

Reflections on the Revolution in France written by Edmund Burke and Edited with an introduction by Conor Cruise O'Brien the Penguin Classics version is the best version of this unparalleled powerful work. The reason for this is that included in this version you have an introduction that gets the reader upto speed. For Burke is without doubt the foremost conservative British political thinkers of his time, (1729-1797).

There is a biographical note on Edmund Burke right after the introduction giving the reader a historical perspective into who is Edmund Burke and why his advice was sought after with regard to the French Revolution and the consequenses of its following. Unlike the United States, France had an established entrenched government, so any change in form of government meant that an upheavel of property, religion, and traditional French institutions would have to occur. Underlying the French Revolution was the latent Catholic Cause which being Irish Burke had a good deal of sympathy.

Burke's Reflections written in 1790 was a really good prediction of the events pretaining to the Reign of Terror experienced by the French. This edition of Edmund Burke's "Reflection on the Revolution in France" has well explained footnotes further giving the reader a much greater appreciation for the practical wisdom of Burke. Burke was a man who would've rather seen a gradual or piecemeal reform as opposed to a revolution as he was sceptical in his belief in expediency.

Another plus for this edition, in contrast to the others available, is that there is a well appointed "Notes" at the end of Burke's writing. Also, at the very end of this book you'll have a recommended reading list, which for those inclined is indispensable. By far this edition is well worth reading and great care has been given to bring this important work in a form that is easily understandable, with enough detail to make it interesting reading.

There is much in O'Brien's book that is interesting, original and insightful. But it suffers from two fatal flaws, one stylistic/structural, one substantive: (1) It is a mess. It is part personal biography, part intellectual biography, part annotated anthology, all mixed together in a confusing and unsatisfactory hodge-podge that may have been deliberate, given Burke's (and therefore O'Brien's) aversion to systems and abstraction. It is as if the author set out with a firm intention to portray Burke a certain way, collected up all the relevant facts, but just couldn't pull it all together in the end. It reads like a work-in-progress, several drafts short of completion and in dire need of a good editor; (2) It seriously overstates its case, and is therefore simply not reliable as an account of Burke's thought. O'Brien's Burke is a pluralist liberal, one of the "good guys" not to be classed among the "reactionaries", as Isaiah Berlin has done. But as Berlin points out--with far too much courtly politeness--in his exchange with O'Brien (reproduced in the appendix), the author has simply turned a blind eye to those aspects of his subject that make him appear illiberal. Most liberals at the time supported the French Revolution, at least in its early phase, and with good reason: it destroyed a confused mass of privilege, injustice and corruption that served the interests of a largely hereditary elite, which Burke vigorously defended. Most liberals since have supported it too. Few (if any) liberals today would hesitate to condemn someone who defended tradition, hereditary privilege and deference to authority as Burke did. To say that Burke was a liberal just doesn't wash. Granted he had SOME liberal tendencies, but he had many other tendencies that liberals have always found repugnant. It is a crude and one-sided portrait. O'Brien subscribes to the old-fashioned Cold War liberalism of Jacob Talmon, who interpreted the struggle between liberal democracy and "totalitarianism" in the 20th Century as a replay of the struggle between liberalism constitutionalism and the Terror. O'Brien's agenda in this book is to accept this dubious and anachronistic framework and to place Burke firmly on the "correct" side in it, with a demonic Rousseau on the other. THE GREAT MELODY was probably out-of-date before O'Brien wrote a word of it, just as much of Burke was when it appeared in the eighteenth century.

"The Great Melody" by Conor Cruise O'Brien is not your traditional biography; there is little here concerning Burke's personal and family life. Instead, the work concentrates on Burke's political career and thought and, specifically, how they relate to his Irish heritage. The result is a fascinating look into the mind and personality of a man who suffered from a conflict of emotions over his Irish heritage that included his father's conversion to Protestantism while his mother and wife remained Catholic. Burke himself was torn in different directions his entire life; loyalty to Britain and also his Irish ancestors and friends suffering under the Penal Laws, loyalty to the British constitution, but also a deep feeling for the need of justice for the oppressed people at home and abroad.

O'Bien's book takes an in-depth look at Burke's career in parliament and as a member of the Whig party through an extensive analysis of his letters, speeches, political relationships, and writings, specifically, as they relate to his struggle on behalf of the American colonists, the struggle of the Irish Catholics, the people of India suffering at the hands of the rapacious East India Co., and the French Revolution.

The work can be a little dry at times and tends to quote in an overly lengthy manner, but the immense erudition and scholarship and the insightful picture of Burke that emerges more than compensate for this. I do wish, however, that O'Brien had spent more time on "Reflections On The Revolution in France," but he feels that since it is so readily available to the reader there is no need. Finally we see an Edmund Burke as he really was and not the "old reactionary" that is so often depicted. We come to understand that Burke always believed that "the people are the true legislator," that Burke did not want to see Americans in Parliament who were slave holders, that he was a life-long opponent of increased powers for the Crown and the corruption such power entailed, that he was one of the few who consistently fought against injustice toward the American colonials, that he found all authoritaianism abhorrent, and that he opposed commercial monopolies and the abuse of power in all its forms. But, because he opposed the overturning of society and its reengineering on the basis of "metaphysical abstractions," he was often portrayed as a reactionary by later pundits. Lewis Namier and his followers are particularly taken to task by O'Brien for this tendency. In the end we see a Burke who always supported basic human rights, but remained constantly aware that real life circumstances must make social and political change possible if such change is not to lead to chaos and violence. Burke's fear of radicalism based upon abstract theory was real and the destructiveness of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Nazi bio-racial religion more than sufficiently proves his point. A reading of O'Brien's fine book can only lead the intelligent reader to a renewed respect for a great man, a decent and liberal minded man, and a man of immense vision.

Everyone knows Edmund Burke's most famous quote: "for evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing". As a former lecturer in political science, I was mainly familiar with Burke as the founder of Anglo-conservatism (infinitely more nuanced and modern than his equivalent in Franco-conservatism, the Count Joseph de Maistre). I had also read an early work, namely "An Enquiry into the nature of the Beautiful and the Sublime", which I thought a brilliant little jewel. But there's much more about Burke than that.

O'Brien, the great man of Irish diplomacy, shows in this extraordinary book that Burke, whom recently history has shown as a fawning servant to the political leaders of his time (Rockingham and Pitt), was at the heart of the great fight between George III's royal absolutism and the emerging English democracy. Burke was on the right side of virtually all the fights he picked. He advocated equality before the law for the Irish subjects of the king, first tolerance and then freedom for the American colonies, the end of the colonialist abuses of the East India company, and a quarantine on the infectious ideas of the French Revolution. The later one is still a contentious affair. Zhou En Lai famously opined that it was still too early (in the 1970s) to judge the French Revolution. Burke would have had none of that. As early as 1790, in the "benign" initial phase of the revolution, he foresaw the Terror, the execution of the Royal Family, the Consulate and the Empire, and the French banner covering all of the Europe, in the name of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".

O'Brien shows the extraordinary situation of an Irish Protestant (always accused of crypto-Catholicism) having great informal influence on the politics of Great Britain, while holding menial offices or representing various "rotten boroughs" in Parliament (this is no aspersion on Burke's memory- that's how politics was done at the time, and anything that gave Burke a pulpit couldn't have been all bad). The "Great Melody" of the title provides the underlying themes around which O'Brien organizes the public part of Burke's life. Far from tiresome, this is a useful device that provides unity and coherence to Burke's thoughts and actions. O'Brien's attacks on mid-century historiography are perfectly adequate, given that much of what was written as that period was designed to regress Burke into irrelevancy, as a sycophant and a lackey. He never was that. He was a good and a great man, and O'Brien does him justice in his book. Perhaps the only fault that I could find in it is a tendency to assume the reader's prior knowledge of the arcanes of Irish history. But these are quibbles. If you can stomach a history of ideas, full of events and studded with memorable characters, this is the book for you.

Conor Cruise O'Brien has spent many years combating the mystical nationalism that insists on a unified Roman Catholic Ireland. The citizens of the Republic and the Catholics of Ulster (not to speak of the Irish-Americans!) may not consciously condone the IRA and its methods, but their tacit approval (and sometimes more) of the aims of this terrorist organization is what keeps it going. By foregrounding this issue, O'Brien is doing that which is unpopular North and South, but needs to be done. My hat is off to him.

This is a personal account of the "troubles" that the Irish have inflicted on each other (with some help from the English) from Wolfe Tone (1798) on. The author spends the last third of the book discussing the current mess in Ulster - current, that is, as of 1995. CC O'Brien has been involved in various of the governments of the Republic of Ireland over the years, as well as working in the UN and being an intellectual-at-large in this country and elsewhere. He is a lapsed Catholic whose aunt Hanna was a well-known Irish Republican activist after the Easter Rising of 1916. It is his thesis that virtually everything in Irish politics that came after 1916 can be explained by reference to the sacral character of the deaths of Connolly, MacBride and others, but particularly of Patrick Pearse, who foretold his death on that occasion in prophetic and religious language that cast himself in the part of the Savior who would be a sacrifice for his country's freedom. These deaths haunt the Irish Catholics still, and those that hear most clearly the "ancestral voices" and their calls for blood in service of the nation are deferred to by those more moderate, for whom the voices are dim.

Actually, I picked up this book to better understand some references in James Joyce. I was not disappointed. Much of the family conversation in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" becomes more clear: the time of the novel was just about the turn of the century, not long after the fall of Parnell (almost wrote "the Fall"), when battle lines were being drawn between Catholics and Protestants, and Catholics and Catholics. As a bonus O'Brien talks about WB Yeats and Maud Gonne and their roles in the events of the early part of the century, particularly Yeats's play "Cathleen ni Houlihan", which became a touchstone of Republican patriotism thereafter. Although Yeats got out of that mystical form of country-worship, and was repudiated by the Catholic sectarians who wanted an Irish AND Catholic nation, his play was retained as an evocative piece of propaganda.

This book is charming and personal, mixing family memoir with formal history. O'Brien has written other things on this painful subject of the intersection of religion and politics (I enjoyed "The Siege" when I read it a dozen years ago), but this is closer to home for him, and I found the metaphor of the "ancestral voices" to be telling: it explains a lot. (In particular, I now have a hope of understanding the movie "Michael Collins", which deals with the tangled politics of the Irish civil war of the early 1920's.) Still, though, I may get the book he and his wife wrote on the history of Ireland for a wider view of events. This book traces an important thread of that history, but must, because of its focus, leave much out. Still, as an explanation of that intractable situation in Ulster I don't think it can be bettered.

I lived in Ireland for over twenty years, starting from just before the time of the 'Troubles'. In all that time, and since, it is my sincere opinion that no-one has talked as much sense about Ireland as Conor Cruise O'Brien. Sadly, he's been much reviled for it. Happily, he's never let that stop him.

Dr O'Brien recently published his autobiography, 'Memoir', which hints gently at an awareness of his own mortality (he's 82 this year). I guess that after he's gone then many folks will realise what they had in the 'Cruiser'. Don't wait on this event, dear reader ! (And anyway, it might not be for a long while yet, the Guinness is VERY good in Dublin, you know!)

To cut a long bit of blarney short - read this book.

O'Brien's courage, scholarship and independence of mind are fully in evidence in this series of reflections on the links between religious and nationalist mythology in his native Ireland. No Irish politician or commentator in the past generation has equalled O'Brien's historical knowledge and insight, and it is this historical sense - coupled with a passionate and reasoned aversion to the ideology and acts of terrorism - that makes his writings unique and vital. For his pains, the apologists for terror frequently engage in emotive and semi-literate diatribes against him; that, coming from them, is a compliment to him.

The narration shifts back and forth between father and sonduring two world wars in the Alsace region. The book opens with oneof the narrators enduring life as a prisoner of war, with the sense of time having ceased to exist. The descriptions of literary life before WWI set up a vivid contrast with the account of a gas attack on the Russian front. A reader well versed in philosophy and history, or reading the original French text, will no doubt understand more of the implications in the dialogues. Read the preface carefully to get acclimated, but don't miss the unexpected developments of this novel.

There are good books and bad books about the Revolution. This one is terrible. O'Brien goes on for 200 pages about Jefferson's support of the French Revolution (so what else is new?) before getting to his real point: Jefferson was a white supremacist because he didn't free his slaves and didn't support the revolution in Haiti. In O'Brien's drunken fantasy, there is something called the "American civil religion" which is going to split and Jefferson will become the patron saint of the white supremacist nutcases like those of Oklahoma City. (there, there, Con, put the bottle down and come to bed) It's a shame, because I recall that years ago O'Brien played a worthwhile--if strongly Anglophile--role in Irish politics. But now he has alighted on our shores to grind several of his European axes and savage a man who has seen worse and as ever emerges unbowed: a great, if complex, inconsistent and highly ambitious, father of our country. If you want to understand the many contradictions in Jefferson's writings and actions, simply read the essay on him in Professor Bailyn's "To Begin the World Anew". Twenty pages with more wisdom than any number of O'Brien's fulminations.

I would give this book a "0" if it were possible. This book by Conor Cruise O' Brien is a postmodernist/deconstructionist
"history" if it can be even called that. O' Brien, a socialist and Burkean, claims Thomas Jefferson was "high on the wild gas of liberty" because he supported the cause of Revolutionary France against the armies of the monarchies of Europe. This book was written to destroy the American people's connection to their great tradition of liberty and republicanism. O' Brien compares Jefferson to the communist butcher Pol Pot because he supported the actions of the Jacobins in the " Reign of Terror". O' Brien of course leaves out the brutality of the ancien regime, and the murders and slaughter metted out by the "holy alliance". Jefferson did believe in dying for liberty, a concept abandoned today by most plugged in Americans. Next O' Brien relates Jefferson is the father of the KKK, the militia movement, and white supremecy. All utter nonsense. If you want a good history of Jefferson and the French Revolution this is not it.

While researching Edmund Burke and the French Revolution, this book offered wonderful and unique insights into the debate through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson during the heat of the French Revolution (and even some things I did not know about Burke). Instead of just giving a personal interpretation, O'Brien relies heavily on primary sources, letting the reader read what the particular person had to say instead of summarizing (or as some authors do, reinterpreting). This book is essential to understanding either Jefferson or the French Revolution.