Terror: too simplistic by half

Terrorists "are morally insane". This single statement illustrates perfectly the shortcomings of this unremarkable book, of its author and his methodology. How do we know terrorists are morally insane? Because, Burleigh tells us, "endless studies of terrorist psychology" say so.

One turns to the endnotes, to the (narrow) select bibliography and to the index in search of a source. None is forthcoming. The statement hangs there, like so many others, so pugnacious, challenging and confrontational that one pictures the author impishly sitting back in the gleeful expectation that he has irritated the glib, appeasing Lefties who dominate the media and political world.

Companions for the morally insane statement litter the pages, notably in the sections to do with Ireland: Protestant women in the north are butch; Catholics have

black hair; Protestants are ginger. Republicans and loyalists, like all terrorists, use "some perceived slight" to fuel their "hysterical rage". Their leaders are chippy, lower class types - Adams a barman, McGuinness a butcher's apprentice - whose status derives solely from their use of the gun.

It's not clear whether Burleigh has ever met a 'terrorist'. There's no sign here of his trying to get under the skin of his subject; there's every sign of intellectual laziness.

For all Burleigh's muscular, tell-it-as-it-is style, this is a deeply conventional and shallow study. The carnage left by bomb and gun, whether wielded by state or non-state actors, is sickening and horrific. But one does not have to be a Leftie appeaser to ask if the causes might not be more complicated than the author allows, and to what degree the motivating 'slights' are perceived or real or a mix of both.

Doubtless this will be taken by some as evidence of moral insanity, or collusion, or worse. I would say that history tells us that