1917- [Donal Conor David Dermot Donough Francis Sheehy Skeffington Cruise
O’Brien] b. 3 Nov. 1917 Dublin; son a journalist
on Freeman’s Journal and Irish Independent, and Kathleen O’Brien (née Katherine Sheehy, presum. model for Miss Ivors); ed. Sandford Park; grandson of David Sheehy, Nationalist
MP from 1885-1918, and a nephew of Fr. Eugene Sheehy; father dies, 25
Dec. 1927; ed. TCD MRIA; m. Christine Foster, of a Presbyterian nationalist
family and related to Robert Lynd, 1932, and with whom three children,
Donal, Fidelma and Kate; administrative officer in Dept.
of Finance, 1942; promoted to First Secretary in External Affairs under
Seán MacBride, 1944; writing articles from 1945; pseud. Donat O’Donnell,
1945-61; edited Foreign Affairs broadsheet Éire dealing largely with anti-partitional
propaganda, from 1949; established and managed Irish News Agency 1950;
issued Maria Cross (1952), a study of chiefly French Catholic authors,
including an essay on Sean O’Faolain; as Donat O’Donnell he
wrote up theatrical fracas surrounding O’Casey’s Bishop’s
Bonfire for New Statesman, stinging O’Casey into a reply,
1955; Counsellor, Paris Embassy, 1955-56; head of UN section (Ireland
having entered in that year), and member of Irish Delegation at UN 1956-60;
sent to Elizabethsville as representative for Dag Hamarskjold in Katanga
in May 1961, after the death of Lumumba; undertook
to end the secession and made controversial statements indicting Britain
and colonial powers; ordered UN resistance to Tshombe forces; resigned
from UN, Dec. 1961; m. Máire MacEntee, 1962; published To Katanga and Back (1962) [ded.
‘For Maire’]; Vice-Chanc. Ghana Univ., 1962-65, under Nkrumah;
adopted two Ghanese children,
Margaret and Patrick; NYU Schweitzer Prof. of Humanities, 1965, and protested against Vietnam
War; valedictory lecture, ‘What Exhortation’?’ (23 April
1969); edited for Penguin Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution
in France (1969), arguing that Whiggish support for the revolution
in England awakened ‘within that reasonable elderly Whig, a slumbering
Jacobite’; Labour TD, Howth, 1969; Murderous Angels produced
at Mark Tapir Forum, Los Angeles, Jan. 1970; elected for Labour to second
seat in North-East Dublin (Charles Haughey being the first elected TD),
and served as Labour spokesman on Northern Ireland; issued States of Ireland (1972), challenging nationalist mythologies in regard to Ulster [Northern Ireland]; served as Minister
for Posts and Telegraphs in Liam Cosgrave’s Fine Gael/Labour Coalition,
1973-77, with unflagging loyalty to the premier and his party leaders
Brendan Corish and Frank Cluskey;
devised solution to technical crisis in P&T implemented after he left
office; notoriously extended Section 31 of Broadcasting Authority Act
to prohibit Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin from gaining access to
air-waves; lost seat by overwhelming vote in election, 1977; ed.-in-chief.
of Observer, 1977-80 [FDA 1979-81, elsewhere, aetat 65], during
which time he dismissed Mary Holland; winner of Irish Times poll
of May 1977 as to whom readers would least like to see running the country;
regularly contributing editor of The Atlantic (Boston); contributed
to Crane Bag issue on ‘Minorities in Ireland’, dealing
with the treatment of minorities in the South; published his ‘commented
anthology’ of Edmund Burke as The Great Melody (1992), emphasising
the ‘Irish layer’ in his personality and his thought, and attributing
to Burke a suppressed sympathy for revolution, only to be disparaged by
E. P. Thompson as a study of ‘Conor O’Burke’; gave 2nd
Ian Gow Memorial Lecture, 1992; highly antagonistic towards John Hume’s
talks with Sinn Féin, 1993; took a seat in Northern Ireland convention
as member of UK Unionist Party associated with Robert McCartney, 1996;
reported in Irish Times as saying in the sequel that if the talks
did not progress in the light of the gains made by Sinn Fein, then the
Unionist party was responsible (Irish Times, 2 June 1996); gave
verbal support to stand made by Ian Paisley in resisting the Northern
Ireland Agreement of April 1998; issued Memoir (1988), warning
Unionists of need to negotiate their place in a nationalist Ireland. DIW
DIL FDA OCIL
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[Donat O’Donnell, pseud.] Maria Cross: Imaginative Patterns in a Group of Modern Catholic Writers (NY & Toronto: OUP 1952; London: Chatto & Windus 1953), viii, 267pp., and Do., [rep. under own name] (1962).
Parnell and His Party 188-1890 (OUP 1957), xii, 373pp., leaf of pls. To Katanga and Back: A UN Case History (London: Hutchinson 1962; NY: Schuster & Schuster 1962).
Writers and Politics, essays (NY: Pantheon; London: Chatto & Windus 1965; Penguin 1976), 318pp.
ed., The Shaping of Modern Ireland [Thomas Davis Lects., 1955-56] (London: Routledge Kegan & Paul 1960), 201pp., and Do. [rep. edn.] (NY: Barnes & Noble 1970), vi, 201pp. [incl. his own essays ‘1891-1916’ and ‘Timothy Michael Healy’.
Conflicting Concepts of the United Nations (1964).
Collected Essays (1966)
Murderous Angels: a political tragedy [?] in black and white (Boston: Little Brown 1968; London: Hutchinson 1969).
Neighbours: The Ewart-Biggs Memorial Lectures, 1979-1980 (London: Faber 1980), 96pp.
with Felix Topolski, The United Nations, Sacred Drama (Hutchinson 1968; NY: Schuster & Schuster 1968), 320pp., ill.
ed. with William Dean Vanech, Power and Consciousness, (OUP 1969), 9, 243pp.
ed. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin 1969) [with 20,000 word intro.].
Dudley Edwards, ed., Conor Cruise O’Brien Introduces Ireland (London: André Deutsch 1969) [among other authors].
Camus (Fontana Collins 1970), 94pp., in US as Albert Camus of Europe and Africa (NY: Viking 1970).
‘What Exhortation?’, in Irish University Review (Spring/Summer 1971), pp.48-61.
with Máire Cruise O’Brien [Máire Mac an tSaoi], A Concise History of Ireland (London: Thames & Hudson 1972), in US as The Story of Ireland (NY: Viking 1972).
States of Ireland (London: Hutchinson 1972).
What Rights Should Minorities Have? [first lect. of The Minorities Rights Group (1972).
The Suspecting Glance [Univ. of Kent, T S Eliot Memorial Lecture 1969] (London: Faber 1972), 91pp.
Herod: Reflections on Political Violence (London: Hutchinson 1978), 236pp. [incls. playscripts ‘Herod Explains’, ‘Salome and the Wild Man’ and ‘King Herod Advises’]
The Northern Connection in Irish-British Relations [Lect. to Irish Association at QUB, Fri. 23 June 1978].
The Press and the World [Haldene Mem. Lect.] (Birbeck 1980)
Why Did the Irish Want Home Rule? [video recording; hist. ser.] (London: Sussex video 1981)
Religion and Politics [10th Annual Convocation Lect., 9 May 1983 (NUU 1983).
Godland: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism (Harvard UP 1988), viii, 97pp.
Passion and Cunning and Other Essays (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1988), 293pp.
God’s Land, Reflections on Religion and Nationalism [William Massey Lectures in History of American Civilization] (Harvard UP 1988), viii, 97pp.
The Siege, The Saga of Israel and Zionism (1985; Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1986), 798pp., index [notes from 663].
Edmund Burke, The Great Melody: A Commented Biography (London: Sinclair-Stevenson 1992), 788pp. [xvi, 629pp.+notes; ills.], and Do., abridged by Jim McCue, as Edmund Burke (New Island Books; Sinclair-Stevenson 1997), pp.356.
On the Eve of the Millennium [lectures delivered in Toronto] (Martin Kessler/Free Press [Simon & Schuster] 1996).
The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution 1785-1800 (Chicago UP; London: Sinclair-Stevenson 1996), 480[353, 367]pp., Do., (London: Pimlico 1998), 400pp.
Memoir: My Life and Themes (Dublin: Poolbeg 1998), 460pp.
Selected Articles
‘My Time at Trinity College’, The Recorder: Journal of the Irish American Historical Society, 13, 1 (Spring 2000), pp.7-37 [cited in The Great Melody, 1992].
‘Edmund Burke and the American Revolution’, in America and Ireland 1776-1976, The American Identity and the Irish Connection [Proceedings of the United States Bicentennial Conference of Cumann Merriman, Ennis, August 1976], ed David Noel Doyle & Owen Dudley Edwards (Greenwood Press [q.d.]); also in Scotland, Europe and the American Revolution, in New Edinburgh Review collection, ed O. D. Edwards & George Shepperson (Edinburgh 1976).
‘Warren Hastings in Burke’s Great Melody’, in Geoffrey Carnall & Colin Nicholson, eds., The Impeachment of Warren Hastings: Papers from a Bicentenary Commemoration (Edin. UP 1988).
‘Nationalism and the French Revolution’, in Geoffrey Best, ed., The Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and Its Legacy (Fontana 1988); ‘Burke and Marx’, in New American Review, Vol. I, No. 1 (1966).
‘Eradicating the Tragic Heroic Mode’, in The Irish Times (22 Aug. 1975), p.10.
‘Politics and the Poet’, in The Irish Times (21 Aug. 1975)
‘Ireland Will Not Have Peace’, in Harpers, Vol. 253, No. 1519 (Dec. 1976), pp.33-42.
‘Liberalism in Ireland’, in Sunday Press (25 Sept. 1977), p.2.
‘Nationalism and the Reconquest of Ireland’, in The Crane Bag, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1977), pp.8-13
‘Decade of Violence’ [first of two charting the course of Northern Ireland’s tragic conflict], in The Sunday Times (19 Aug 1979)
‘The Nationalist Trend’, in Times Literary Supplement (1 Nov. 1985).
‘Passion and Cunning: An Essay on the Politics of WB Yeats’, in A. N. Jeffares & K. G. W. Cross, eds., In Excited Reverie (London 1965).
‘The Embers of Easter 1916-1966’, in Owen Dudley Edwards & Fergus Pyle, eds., 1916: The Easter Rising (London 1968).
‘Northern Ireland, its past and its future, the future’, in Race, 14 (1972).
‘Ireland and International Affairs’, in Owen D. Edwards, ed., Conor Cruise O’Brien Introduces Ireland (London 1969).
‘Ireland: The Mirage of Peace, in New York Review of Books (21 April 1986).
‘The Power of a Nation’s Ghosts’ [2nd extract from Ancestral Voices, 1994], in Sunday Independent (23 Oct. 1994 ) with Edward W. Said, and John Lukacs, ‘The Intellectual in the Post-Colonial World: Response and Discussion’, in Salmagundi, 70-71 (1986), pp.65-81.
Prefaces & Forewords to: Jeffrey Praeger, Building Democracy in Ireland, Political Order and Cultural Integration in a Newly Independent Ireland, CUP 1986); Maurice O’Connell, Daniel O’Connell, the Man and his Politics (1989), with a foreword by Conor Cruise O’Brien; Frank Callanan, The Parnell Split 1890-91, (Cork UP 1992).
Lectures & Pamphlets, Ireland, the United Nations and Southern Africa : a public lecture delivered in Dublin, July 20th, 1967 (1967); Neighbours: Four Lectures in Memory of Christopher Ewart-Biggs ed. Thomas Packenham and intro. by Jane Ewart-Biggs (London: Faber & Faber 1980).
Neighbours: Four Lectures in Memory of Christopher Ewart-Biggs [British Ambassador to Ireland assassinated in 1976]; intro. Jane Ewart-Biggs, ed. Thomas Packenham (London: Faber 1980), 96pp., Contents: Introduction [9]; The Outlook from West to East [16]; One Aspect of Irish-British Relations [35]; The Northern Connection in Irish-British Relations; Ireland, Britain, America [58]; Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic: Attitudes, Options and a Positive Programme [78]. The lectures were delivered in Dublin (Jan. 1978), Belfast (June 1978), New York (Nov. 1978), and Oxford (Oct. 1979). ‘It was the Irish vision of England that villed Christopher Ewart-Biggs.’ (p.17.)
The Shaping of Modern Ireland, ed., Conor Cruise O’Brien. CONTENTS: Foreword, [I]; O'Brien, 1891-1916 [13]; ‘Stephens, Devoy, Tom Clarke’ [25]; Desmond Ryan , ‘John Redmond’ [38]; Myles Dillon, ‘Douglas Hyde’ [50]; Terence de Vere White, ‘Arthur Griffith’ [63]; David Greene, ‘Michael Cusack and The Rise of the G.A.A.’ [74]; R. B. McDowell, ‘Edward Carson’ [85]; Sir Shane Leslie, ‘Archbishop Walsh’ [98]; Brian Inglis, ‘Moran of The Leader and Ryan of The Irish Peasant’ [108]; Roger McHugh, Thomas Kettle and Francis Sheehy Skeffington [124]; Donald Davie, ‘The Young Yeats’ [140]; J. J. Byrne, ‘A.E. and Sir Horace Plunkett [152]; O’Brien, ‘Wimothy Michael Healy [164]; R. D. C. Black, ‘William James Pirrie [172]; Dorothy Macardle, ‘James Connolly and Patrick Pearse’ [197].
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D. R. Lysaght, End of a Liberal: The Literary Politics of Conor Cruise O’Brien [Dublin: Plough Books 1976], 56pp.
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl & Robert Hogan, ‘An Appraisal of Conor Cruise O’Brien’, Journal of Irish Literature, Vol. III, No.2 [Newark, Delaware: Proscenium] (May 1974), pp.3-47, with checklist compiled by Joanne L. Henderson [otherwise as a pamphlet, Newark, Delaware: Proscenium 1974).
W. J. McCormack, ‘The Mystery of the Clarity of Conor Cruise O’Brien’, in The Battle of the Books: Two Decades of Irish Cultural Debate (Dublin: Lilliput 1986), pp.19-20, et passim.
Donald Harman Akenson, Conor, A Biography of Conor Cruise O’Brien (McGill-Queen’s UP 1994), 574pp.
Kevin Barry, review of The Great Melody, in Studies (Autumn 1993), pp.333-339.
Anthony J. Jordan, To Laugh or to Weep, A Biography of Conor Cruise O’Brien (Blackwater Press 1995), 267pp.
‘Cruise O’Brien: The playwright politician’ [interview] in Des Hickey and Gus Smith, eds., A Paler Shade of Green (London: Leslie Frewin 1972), p.228-35; ‘Justifying Oneself to Posterity’, in Books Ireland (Dec. 1998), pp.339-40.
Richard English and Joseph Morrison Skelly, Ideas Matter: Essays in Honour of Conor Cruise O’Brien (Poolbeg 1998), 410pp.
Naim Altabah, Of a Certain Age: Interviews (London: Quartet 1991), contains interview with Conor Cruise O’Brien.
Frank Callanan, ‘A Revisionist revisited’; Augustine Martin, ‘Passion and Cunning: "What Stalked in the Post Office?"’ (1977; rep. in Crane Bag Book, 1982, p.320) [riposte to Conor Cruise O’Brien’s essay].
Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, Yeats, Ireland and Fascism (1981).
[q.a.], ‘Yeats, Fascism and Conor O’Brien’, in London Magazine, 7, 4 July 1967, pp.22-41 [cited by Jeffares, in New Commentary, 1984, p.346].
Eric Hobsbaum, ‘The Sacred and the National’ [review of Godland: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism], in LSE Quarterly (Winter 1989), pp.357-69 [rep. as Chap. 5 of Encounters with Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell 1994), pp.59-73.
Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Suspecting Glance, a documentary interview, RTE1, Sunday 20 Jan. 2002.
Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (1967), pp.23-4, 28.
F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (1971), p.581.
Ronan Sheehan, interview with Seán MacBride, in The Crane Bag, 2, 1 & 2 (1977), p.302.
John A Murphy, ‘Further Reflections on Irish nationalism’, in The Crane Bag 2, 1&2 (1978); Crane Bag Book, pp.304-11.
David Cairns & Shaun Richards, Writing Ireland, Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture (Manchester 1988), p. 25.
Eamon McCann, War and an Irish Town (1974).
Tom Paulin, ‘Conor Cruise O’Brien: The Making of a loyalist’, in Ireland & the English Crisis (Bloodaxe 1984), originating as a Times Literary Supplement review of O’Brien’s Ewart-Biggs Memorial Lectures: Neighbours (1978-79).
Luke Gibbons, ‘From Megalith to Megastore’, in Irish Studies, ed. Tom Bartlett et al., (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988), pp.230-31.
David Gwynn Morgan, [review], in The Irish Review, No. 6 (Spring 1989), pp.128-130.
Jonathan Bardon, The History of Ulster (1992).
Fergus Pyle, ‘Profile’ [interview], in The Irish Times [Weekend] (12 Sept. 1992).
E. P. Thompson, review of The Great Melody, Times Literary Supplement (4 Dec. 1992), pp.3-4.
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Chatto & Windus 1993), pp. 24, 63, 209-10
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, ‘The most hated man in Ireland’, review of Donald Harman Akenson, Conor, A Biography of Conor Cruise O’Brien (McGill-Queen’s UP 1994), 574pp.; Akenson, Conor, Anthology (McGill-Queen’s 1994), 356pp., incl. bibliography; and O’Brien, Ancestral Voices (Poolbeg 1994) [Spectator, 7 Jan. 1995].’
Anthony Roche, Contemporary Irish Drama (Dublin: Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1995), p.258f., identifies O’Brien as the first to draw a parallel between recent events in N. Ireland and Antigone, in the Belfast lecture of Oct. 1968, soon after printed in The Listener and later as Neighbours (1980); further noting the Times Literary Supplement review in which Tom Paulin drew attention to the revisions in O’Brien’s text strongly favouring the outlook of Creon. [See further under Paulin.]
Larry Siedentop, ‘The Western Malaise’, review of On the Eve of the Millenium: The Future of Democracy through an Age of Unreason (NY: Free press; Simon & Schuster [q.d.].), Times Literary Supplement, [q.d.], pp.3-4.
Garret Fitzgerald, review of Donald Harman Akenson [Prof. of history at Kingston, Ontario], Conor, A Biography of Conor Cruise O’Brien (1994), in Irish Times, 29 Oct. 1994.
Bernard Bailyn [Harvard Prof. of History], review of Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution 1785-1800 (Sinclair-Stevenson [1996]), 353pp., in Times Literary Supplement (15 Nov., 1996), pp.3-4.
Tom Dunne, ‘Unchained Melody’, in Kevin Barry, Tom Dunne, et al., eds., The Irish Review, 13 (Winter 1992/93) pp.165-69, reviews The Great Melody: a thematic biography and commented anthology of Edmond Burke, (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992).
Richard Kearney, ‘Irish Heritage in the French Revolution: The Rights of the People and the Rights of Man’, in Barbara Hayley & Christopher Murray, eds., Ireland and France - A Bountiful Friendship (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992), p.41.
Richard Kearney, ‘Ulysses returns to Ithaca’, review of Memoir: Life and Themes (Profile), in Times Literary Supplement (15 Jan. 1999), p.6.
Declan Kiberd, Anglo-Irish Attitudes [Field Day Pamphlets, No. 6] (Derry: Field Day 1984), (p.17.
Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (London: Jonathan Cape 1995), pp.558-61.
Theresa O’Connor, ‘Demythologising Nationalism: Joyce’s Dialogised Grail Myth’, in Vincent J. Cheng & Timothy Martin, eds., Joyce in Context, Cambridge UP 1992, p.100.
Sean Lysaght, ‘The Scourge of Nationalism’, review of Ancestral Voices (1994), in ILS (Fall 1995, p.33).
Peter Berresford Ellis, A History of the Irish Working Class (Pluto 1996), p.340.
Mick Fealty, David Steven & Trevor Ringland, ‘A Long Peace? The Future of Unionism in Northern Ireland’ (Slugger O’Toole 2003), pp.9-10. note: “Slugger O’Toole” is a website edited by Mick Fealty [link]; the printed version of this paper was circulated as a supplement of Fortnight [Belfast] June 2003).
Mary McAleese, Magill (Feb. 1998, p.20ff.).
Anne McHardy, obituary of Mary Holland, in The Guardian (9 June 2004).
Ernest Gellner, ‘The Sacral and the National’ [1989], Encounters with Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell 1994), Preface, p. 5, 61-3, 67-73.
Maurice Hayes, Fortnight, Feb. 2005), p.8-9.
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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3: selects Passion and Cunning [596-602]; 641, 648, 650, BIOG, 677-78 [as supra]; characterises States of Ireland as a ‘wide-ranging critique of Irish nationalism’. Bibl., Donat O’Donnell [Conor Cruise O’Brien], ‘The Parnellism of Seán O’Faolain’ in Maria Cross (Burns & Oates 1963), pp.87-105. Also, excerpts: Conor Cruise O’Brien, arguing that the tradition of violence originates in a bond of Catholicism and nationalism, unrepresentative of the democratic tradition in Ireland, ‘There is a real continuity of Irish nationalism, not an ideological continuity, but a continuity of the traditions and feelings of a people. That people sees itself as the people of Ireland, and that perception is a large part of the problem. For these are not all the people of Ireland. They are the Catholic people of Ireland, formerly Gaelic-speaking. [Article published in New York Review of Books, 29 April 1985; rep. in Passion and Cunning, 1988; and excerpted in FDA3 595 (also quoted in editorial essay, p.566).] FURTHER, FDA3 567, O’Brien, ‘The Nationalist Trend’, TLS, 1 Nov 1985, pp.1230, ‘It would be wrong to conclude that all Ireland has fallen victim to enlightenment values. In rural Ireland, throughout the last summer, and into this summer, numerous statues of the Blessed Virgin were seen to move, and thousands of people came, by car and minibus, to see them move’. FURTHER, Conor Cruise O’Brien calls ‘the area where literature and politics overlap’ an ‘unhealthy intersection’ because, it is ‘suffused with Romanticism’ and therefore breeds bad politics - Fascism and Nationalism.’ (Edna Longley, ‘"Inner Émigré" or "Artful Voyeur"?, Seamus Heaney’s ‘North’, in Tony Curtis, ed., The Art of Seamus Heaney, Brigend 1982, p.93; rep. in Poetry in the Wars, 1986); FDA3 ed. note refers to a series of articles, ‘Politics and the Poet’, and ‘radicating the Tragic Mode’, Irish Times, 21-22 August 1975 [also quoted in Richard Kearney, ‘Beyond Art and Politics’, The Crane Bag, 1, No. 1, 1977, p.9.).
Belfast Public Library holds Passion and Cunning and Other Essays (1988), which contains Passion and Cunning, rep. from In Excited Reverie, ed. A N Jeffares [1965], together with reviews of works including R. Kearney, ed., The Irish Mind, which O’Brien describes as ‘a bad case of cultural nationalism’, and John Feehan, Bobby Sands, which O’Brien reviews under the title of ‘Mutations of Nationalism.’
Brian Cleeve & Anne Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), cites The Siege, A Study of Zionism and Israel [sic], where title-page London edn. has A Saga of Israel and Zionism; but cf. also short titles list in The Great Melody (1992), The Siege: the Story of Israel and Zionism, poss. American edition title.]
The Great Melody (1992), front papers lists Maria Cross, Imaginative Patterns in a Group of Catholic Writers (1952); Parnell and His Party (1957); To Katanga and Back (1962); States of Ireland (1972); The Siege: The Story of Israel and Zionism (1986); Passion and Cunning, Essays on Nationalism, Terrorism, and Revolution (1988) [e.g. ‘Virtue and Terror, Rousseau and Robespierre’]; God’s Land, Reflections on religion and nationalism (1988) [Harvard lecture, see infra]; edited Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin Classics 1968); Ancestral Voices (Dublin: Poolbeg 1994; Univ. of Chicago Press [1995]), 197pp.; also Donald Harman Akenson, Conor, Anthology (McGill-Queen’s 1994), 356pp.
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama (RTE 1987), writes: RTÉ ’s enthusiasm for the change in Govt. the next year [i.e., 1973, following the dismissal of the RTÉ Authority in 1972] and the appointment of Conor Cruise O’Brien, critic of the previous government’s policy on RTE, as Min. of Posts [sic] and Telegraphs, was short-lived. The amending legislation which he introduced in 1976 did limit the arbitrary exercise of govt. power in this domain. But, by issuing a more specific directive, prohibiting interviews with members of proscribed organisations, he strengthened the force of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Authority Act 1960 ... When the question of a second channel arose, the Minister, Conor Cruise O’Brien, proposed not creating RTÉ " but re-broadcasting BBC1 instead. Following a survey showing this to be contrary to pubic wishes, the decision was made in favour of RTÉ2. [Sheehan, p.153.]
Parnell reviewed: Conor Cruise O’Brien contrib. a foreword to Frank Callanan, The Parnell Split 1890-91 (Cork UP 1992), remarking that the author is in firm control of his sources’ and praising his fantasia or imaginative insight - a term employed in his own work The Great Melody (1992).
God’s People: Conor Cruise O’Brien reviews Donald Harman Akenson, God’s People, Convenant and Land in S. Africa, Israel and Ulster (Cornell UP 1993?), calling the work splendidly illuminating and enthrallingly readable.’
Saintly: In his lecture on Joyce in 1967, Niall Montgomery referred without irony to My saintly, distinguished fellow-citizen’ Conor Cruise O’Brien. (See Montgomery, A Context for Mr. Joyce’s Work’, in Maurice Harmon, ed., The Celtic Master, Dublin: Dolmen 1969, p.14.)
John Banville has given the name Whitewater to the house of the Behrenses in his novel The Book of Evidence (1989), dealing with events very like the MacArthur case that caused O’Brien to coin the phrase GUBU to as an abbreviation of the terms used by Charles Haughey in summary of his reaction to the discovery that the malefactor has hidden in the General Attorney’s house in Dalkey.
Antigon-istic: Neil Corcoran, reviewing Seamus Heaney’s translation-version of Antigone (Abey 2004), writes: The play has featured more recently, too, in Irish public life in the controversial article that Conor Cruise O’Brien published in The Listener in October 1968, in which he identified Antigone with the Queen’s University student civil rights campaigners - Heaney was a lecturer at Queen’s then - declaring that the consequences of her action were “a stiff price for that handful of dust on Polyneices”, and recommending instead the quietism of Ismene.’ Corcoran later adds: For Cruise O’Brien, Antigone is “an uncompromising element in our being, as dangerous in her way as Creon”.’ (The Guardian, 1 May 2004 [online].)
Kith & Kin: Francis Cruise O’Brien (1885-1927), son of J. Cruise O’Brien, was related by marriage to the Sheehy family; able student at Royal University and auditor of UC Debating Soc. [L&H]; prominent in nationalist politics; leader writer for Freeman’s Journal and afterwards for Irish Independent. (See Richard Ellmann, ed., Selected Letters of James Joyce, 19175, p.142, ftn.)
Kith & Kin: A son Donal is Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and is a long-term sufferer from MS; a dg. Fidelma married Nicholas Sims, son of the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, a businessman and executive with Bord Bainne [Milk Board]; a second dg. Kate, a novelist and senior editor for Poolbeg Press, died of brain haemorrhage (aetat. 49), survived by her husband Joe Kearney and her son Alexander; an adopted dg. Margaret works for a computer company based in Navan; an adopted son Patrick was at one point spectacularly successful in high-tech communications and now lives in London (See Geoffrey Wheatcroft, feature article, in The Guardian, 12 July 2003; online.)
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)