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Lynne Olson will deliver the September Bradley Lecture.

The September Bradley Lecture will focus on the subjects of Lynne Olson's recently published book Troublesome Young Men. The men in the title of the book were a band of Tory members of Parliament who risked political suicide to revolt against Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and help bring Winston Churchill to power in May 1940. If not for these rebels, Churchill might never have become prime minister and Britain might well have been defeated by Germany in the first year of World War II.  A story of moral and political courage, Olson’s book demonstrates how a small group of men, without much political power or influence, can change the course of history by standing up for what they believe.

Lynne Olson has been a reporter and writer since shortly after her graduation from the University of Arizona. In 1971 she went to work for the Associated Press (AP) in Salt Lake City, and in 1973, she was asked by AP to become the wire service’s first female correspondent in Moscow.  After Jimmy Carter became president, Olson joined the Washington bureau of the Baltimore Sun, where she covered national politics and eventually the White House. In 1981, she left the Sun to become a freelance writer. She has written for such publications as American Heritage, Smithsonian magazine, Working Woman, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Ms., Elle, Glamour, Washington Journalism Review, and Baltimore Magazine. She also taught journalism for five years as an assistant professor at American University in Washington.  Olson and her husband, Stanley Cloud, are coauthors of The Murrow Boys, which was named one of the best books in 1996 by Publishers Weekly. Freedom’s Daughters, Olson’s second book, was the first comprehensive history of women in the civil rights movement, and it won a Christopher Award in 2002. Olson joined with Cloud again to write A Question of Honor: The Kosciuszko Squadron: Forgotten Heroes of World War II. Olson’s fourth book, Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England, was published in April 2007.