Herod: Reflections on Political Violence

In Herod: Reflections on Political Violence (first published in 1978) Conor Cruise O'Brien collects a number of essays alongside three short plays that dramatise political arguments through the infamous figure of the Roman king of Judaea for whom the collection is named.

'A great book. In it, O'Brien not only denounces IRA terrorism, as you would expect from a mainstream politician, but - in a sense quite different from the rationalisations offered by ideological apologists for political vi...