On Art and War and Terror

AUTHOR APPROVED Front cover: On Art and War and Terror Alex Danchev 'The range of these beautifully crafted essays is often dazzling. At his best, Danchev reveals himself to be a gifted and profound essayist.' Bryan Cheyette, /The Independent/ Back cover: A /Sunday Telegraph/ Book of the Year 'Alex Danchev's series of essays remind us why he is one of the most perceptive and witty scholars writing in Britain today.' Andrew Roberts, /The Sunday Telegraph/ A /Times Higher Education/ Book of the Week 'A powerful, united and beautifully strange book.' Robert Eaglestone, /Times Higher Education/ 'One of the most important books I have had the pleasure to read in a long time... lucid, illuminating, mesmerizing... a profound reading experience.' /Millennium: Journal of International Studies/ 'Beautifully lucid and thoughtful essays on the most difficult issues of our age and, in particular, the nature of humanity in times of conflict.' Karen Shook, /Times Higher Education/ The nobility of poetry, says Wallace Stevens, is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. This is a book about violence of both kinds. It traffics in war poetry, war photography, war films, war stories, war diaries and the like, but also in war itself: in blood - blood like a carwash, as Christopher Logue's Homer has it - and therefore in political legitimacy, moral authority, civility, depravity, terror, torture, honour and conscience; not to speak of strange things like active passivity and senseless kindness. The violence within is illuminating. The violence without is unrelenting. We need all the protection we can get. Alex Danchev is Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of a number of widely acclaimed biographies, of Field Marshal Sir John Dill, Oliver Franks, Basil Liddell Hart and Georges Braque, and co-editor of the bestselling War Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke. His latest book is /100 Artists' Ma