Books March 1995
Greatest living Irishman
Reviews of Conor: A Biography of Conor Cruise O’Brien by Donald Harman Akenson & Conor Cruise O’Brien Anthology edited by Mr. Akenson.
Conor Cruise O’Brien is one of the most extraordinary personalities of the late twentieth century. Born in Ireland in 1917, he has been successively a civil servant, diplomat, U.N. official, academic administrator, member of the Irish parliament, Irish minister for posts and telegraphs, journalist, and author of a half-dozen first-rate books and several hundred articles, ranging from literary criticism to political philosophy and international affairs. Though well-grounded in Irish history and culture (unlike most of his countrymen, he is fully fluent in Gaelic), O’Brien has lived and worked in France, Britain, America, and Africa, and is a veteran of politics and the culture wars in each.
By the time O’Brien burst upon the American intellectual scene in the early 1960s he already had behind him a fairly extensive career in the Irish civil service and at the United Nations, and...
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