Volume LIII Number 3
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Books
Blood and Rage by Michael Burleigh
Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism,
by Michael Burleigh;
Harper Press, 2008, £25.
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches,
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation,
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good lord!
—G.K. Chesterton, “A Hymn” (1915)
In this painstakingly researched book, Michael Burleigh examines most of the versions of terrorism of the last two centuries. From Ireland he makes his way via the nineteenth-century Russian nihilists and revolutionaries, and then the anarchists, to the weird spoilt-brat Marxists of continental Europe a few decades back. He looks at some of the terrorists who featured in the dismantling of the great European empires. One cannot do it all, and, sadly, there is nothing on the Mau Mau or on Eoka. There is, however, a chilling account of the destruction of French Algeria, a country standing in its late days on the verge of economic modernity.
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