Ian Oliver – författare

'The most penetrating survey of the police since the royal commission on the police...This second edition has become even more pertinent.' - Lord Deedes Police, Government and Accountability is an examination of the relationship between police and central and local government in the United Kingdom. The book deals with the constitutional position of police and traces developments in the debate on accountability from the Royal Commission report of 1962 to the present day. The second edition also re-examines the police and government relationship after the passing of the controversial Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994 and the local government reforms. Particular attention is given to the model of accountability in Northern Ireland and the role played by the army in aid to the civil power.

By recognizing the pervasive influence that Herodotus’s career as an oral performer had on his composition of the Histories, The Audiences of Herodotus: Oral Performance and the Battle Narratives argues that the Histories’ versions of the three most important battles in the Persian Wars—the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea—persistently and disproportionately advance the interests, biases, and political agendas of distinct audiences in the mid-fifth century, well before Herodotus assembled his famous work of history as it survives to us. The Salamis and Plataea narratives reflect a mid-century audience of Athenians and their allies; the Thermopylae narrative reflects an Amphictyonic audience gathered at the Pythian Festival. Ian Oliver concludes that, as a participant in a culture of wisdom performance (epideixis), Herodotus originally composed short, ideologically motivated performance pieces that he intended to promote tendentious reinterpretations of these momentous events, then relied on these narratives when he composed his final text: the unitary Histories.

The hostilities that saw the break-up of Tito's Yugoslavia ravaged the Balkans and generated some of the most tragic episodes in modern history. War and Peace in the Balkans explores the history of the conflict and its themes from an insider's perspective. In this independent and critical account, Ian Oliver uses his extensive experience in the region to evaluate the role of the international community in its responses to the war and the efforts to rebuild.