Troublesome Young Men

"Lynne Olson’s brisk, engaging new book, Troublesome Young Men, . . . has given us a fascinating snapshot of the Tory 'rebels,' as she calls them, who ultimately opposed Neville Chamberlain and helped elevate the then-unbeatified Churchill.

"Olson’s characters shared school ties, country houses, London clubs and, in at least one scandalous instance, a woman who was simultaneously the wife of one and the mistress of another. Their names have little resonance now [but] Olson’s book should help correct that, for these men were early defenders of freedom in the face of Nazism and English appeasement, often taking stands that put them at odds with men and women they had known all their lives and turned them into political targets. Neville Chamberlain -- so seemingly upright and straitlaced in old photographs -- tapped telephones, conducted surveillance and played dirty tricks on opponents within his own party. He reveled in gathering political intelligence against his foes, who were, he boasted, 'totally unaware of my knowledge of their proceedings. I [have] continual knowledge of their doings and sayings.' . . .

". . . The strength of Olson’s book is how well she writes of the human element in politics and diplomacy. For Tories like [Ronald] Cartland, deviating from the Chamberlain line was seen as betrayal, not disagreement, and the deviators were subjected to raw schoolboy pressure. When Harold Nicolson spoke out against the government’s abandonment of Czechoslovakia after Munich, he was reproached on grounds of clubbiness: 'The actual expression used to me was ‘You must not bat against your own side’ -- as if it were a game of cricket that was being played in this most revered assembly.' When Cartland defied Chamberlain, he was told he would soon be ruined.

"But Cartland would not be there to savor Churchill’s triumph when it came. He was in France, fighting the German troops Chamberlain and others had said would never strike. Cartland died a soldier’s death in 1940, and the news took his colleagues back to the moment almost a year earlier when he had told Chamberlain that 'we may be going to die.' According to Harold Nicolson: 'We shall forever remember him as he was at that moment. Defiant, faithful, devoted and brave beyond compare.'

"'No government can change men’s souls,' Cartland once said. 'The souls of men change governments.' This new book reminds us that there are others besides Churchill who deserve our thanks for seeing us through freedom’s defining storm, those years when everything was at risk, when everything seemed lost, and yet light triumphed over darkness."
--Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review

"Lynne Olson's gripping new political history of the countdown to 1939 . . . focuses on the 'troublesome young men' who went against the 'group think' of appeasement . . . At the book's core lies a series of interconnected biographies depicting a cabal of well-heeled Tories. The heroes of the day are Harold Macmillan, Anthony Eden, Duff Cooper, Bob Boothby, 'Bobbety' Cranbourne, Ronald Cartland, Harold Nicolson and Leo Amery. Each had their own unique plethora of ambitions, vices and political prejudices which only rarely came into harmony. But from 1937 onwards, they coalesced to oppose the policies of appeasement, depose Chamberlain as prime minister and install Winston Churchill in his place.

"Olson . . . charts just how arduous and uncertain the process was. Chamberlain -- whom she captures well -- combined brittle vanity with a nasty streak of political vindictiveness. Those who were not his 'friends' could count on a battery of retribution up to and including parliamentary deselection. . . . If this history sometimes reads like an Anthony Trollope novel -- with clubland plots, Savoy dinners and Cliveden weekends -- then it is because that was how high politics worked. The extraordinary 30-year affair between Dorothy Macmillan and Boothby and its effects on Harold Macmillan (a close political ally of Boothby's) provides just one of Olson's intriguing side avenues into this network of gilded Tory rebels."
--Tristram Hunt, The Guardian (UK)

"As told by Lynne Olson, Troublesome Young Men is a crackling tale of the long campaign mounted by [a handful of independent, outspoken Conservatives] who risk their careers to challenge a prime minister who, as a politician, is far from the weakling he appears as a statesman. Ultimately they win, but at great cost to themselves, with little applause from their compatriots and little appreciation from Churchill. Two generations later, Olson casts their historic contribution as a glorious profile in courage.

"Olson recalls the train of events with authority and elegance. Her ear as a journalist gives the narrative a pace that allows it to unfold seamlessly as she introduces the cast of characters. Together they will mount their quiet coup d'etat against Chamberlain. Characters they are. They are the aristocracy, graduates of Eton, Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, the natural governing class. Some are landed or titled, some are in cabinet, some fought in the Great War . . . When she describes the price paid by the rebels (Cartwright is killed in the war, Boothby is silenced by political scandal, Macmillan is humiliated by his wife's long affair with Boothby), Olson is deeply affecting.

"At its heart . . . this is a morality tale: the clarity of those who saw evil; the confusion of Chamberlain and the defeatists who denied the danger; the greatness of Winston Churchill, who saved his country -- and the civilized world -- in the greatest crisis in its history."
--Andrew Cohen, Globe and Mail (Toronto)

"He was a dominant leader of his government, utterly convinced of the
righteousness and the rectitude of his policies, especially insofar as they
concerned international affairs. He gathered around him a coterie of
tight-lipped conservative advisers who were as like-minded and narrow-minded
as he was. He scorned his critics in the legislature, branding them foolish,
ignorant and unpatriotic. He had no time for members of any party but his
own, and he treated the opposition with contempt. He cowed and coerced the
media, and he authorized telephone tapping on an unprecedented scale. By
such arrogant and intimidating means, he was determined to leave a more
significant mark on public affairs than either his father or his brother
had. But the result was a succession of foreign policy disasters that did
his country untold damage in the eyes of the world.

"George W. Bush? No, Neville Chamberlain. As Lynne Olson, a former White
House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, points out in this vivid and
compelling book, these were exactly the criticisms directed at the British
prime minister as he persistently pursued his policy of appeasing Adolf
Hitler in a manner that may be described as vain in both senses of that
word. Chamberlain was conceitedly confident during the late 1930s that he
was doing the right thing, but his policy crashed into ruins when it turned
out that the Führer could not be sated and that a second world war with
Germany could not be avoided.

"Troublesome Young Men describes and celebrates the efforts of Chamberlain's
opponents within his own Conservative Party. These Tory rebels finally
succeeded in bringing the prime minister down after a famous debate in the
House of Commons in early May 1940 in which Leo Amery ended his powerful
speech by quoting the terrible words that Oliver Cromwell had used to
dismiss the Long Parliament 300 years before: "You have sat too long here
for any good you have been doing! Depart, I say, and let us have done with
you. In the name of God, go!" Chamberlain grudgingly resigned, and Winston
S. Churchill succeeded him, convinced that destiny had nurtured him and
prepared him for what would soon be his finest hour. Yet while this may all
seem inevitable in retrospect, there was nothing predestined about it at the
time . . .

"Several (though not all) the rebels were rewarded with junior jobs by
Churchill in his great wartime coalition, and two of them, Eden and
Macmillan, later became prime minister. In Macmillan's case, this was
something of a surprise, but Eden had long been Churchill's heir apparent.
Yet his prime ministership turned out to be a disaster. Convinced that
Egypt's nationalist president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was another Hitler, Eden
launched a military expedition in 1956 to get back the Suez Canal, which
Nasser had nationalized. World opinion was outraged, and the Americans
refused to help; Eden's health collapsed, and he was obliged to resign,
whereupon Macmillan succeeded him. "Not for the first time, and certainly
not for the last," Olson rightly notes, "the lessons of Munich and
appeasement were wrongly applied to a later international crisis." President
Bush and his fellow neocons should take note."
--David Cannadine, Washington Post

"Here is the engrossing story of the British Tory dissidents, upper-class MPs
who denounced Neville Chamberlain's attempts to mollify Hitler's ravenous
territorial ambitions in pre-World War II Europe. The 'Young Rebels'
despised appeasement as a diplomatic strategy and sought to remove
Chamberlain from office. As back benchers, they were expected to toe the
Conservative Party line strictly enforced by Chamberlain and his Tory whip,
David Margesson. Yet Ronald Cartland, Harold Macmillan, Bob Boothby, Harold
Nicholson, and their like-minded colleagues risked political suicide in
their frustrating attempts to oust Chamberlain and to make Winston Churchill
prime minister. It was only after the outbreak of hostilities and the dual
defeats in Norway and France that their concerns finally gained traction:
Chamberlain stepped down and the indomitable Churchill became England's
leader, vindicating the Young Rebels. Olson (Freedom's Daughters) does a
superb job of capturing the smoked-filled, whiskey-soaked ambience of
British politics and the web of personal relationships involved. While not
sympathetic to Chamberlain's diplomatic strategy, she does convey the
complexities of developing an effective foreign policy in a parliamentary
government. For a more sympathetic view of Chamberlain's attempts to keep
the peace, see Peter Neville's Hitler and Appeasement. Olson has crafted a
seamless narrative that flows from primary and secondary sources and is a
worthy addition to all World War II collections."
--Jim Doyle, Library Journal

"During the 1930s, as the rise of Nazism threatened western civilization, Winston Churchill’s was a lonely voice warning of the coming danger, opposing the British government’s policy of appeasement and urging immediate rearmament. Lonely, but not entirely alone. For a few younger Tory members of Parliament held similar views about the German threat, though they did not necessarily agree with Churchill on other issues. The odds were against them, and in attacking their own party’s leaders they put their careers at risk, but in the end they and their allies prevailed: Neville Chamberlain and his defeatist government were overthrown, opening up the room at the top that Churchill so famously filled. Lynne Olson has seized upon their wonderful but neglected story and has told it with verve. It is a riveting tale, immensely readable, that brings to history the excitement of a novel."
--David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last Summer

"Olson's story picks up energy as she reviews the events of 1940, when at long last Chamberlain was replaced by Churchill. Olson is interested in the moral imperatives driving her protagonists. The dominant figure in the narrative, of course, is Churchill, who despised Chamberlain's defeatism but served loyally in his cabinet until Chamberlain's forced resignation. Infused with the sense of urgency felt by the young Tories, Olson's vivid narrative of a critical generational clash leaves the reader wondering what might have happened had they prevailed earlier on."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

A Question of Honor

"Exciting. . . . A tale of heroism, camaraderie and glory. The authors vividly re-create the airmen’s daily bouts with death and nights of partying, their lost lives and loves."
--The Washington Post Book World

"Olson and Cloud use the [Kosciuszko Squadron] pilots' story as the centerpiece of an impassioned, riveting account of Poland's betrayal by Britain and the United States, which quickly forgot the Poles' heroism in their rush to appease Stalin's Soviet Union."
--Adam Nagorski, Newsweek

"Exciting and compelling, a fine story too rarely told, a tribute to the Polish fighting spirit, and a well-written war history about a distant but very good neighbor."
--Alan Furst

"A wonderful story, wonderfully told. Heroism and betrayal make for heady reading, and this book is long overdue."
--Norman Davies

"An astonishing achievement! Lynne Olson and Stanley Cloud give us a fascinating account of the extremely well documented heroic and daring struggle of a group of Polish military pilots and through it they present us a glimpse of the harrowing history of Poland and Europe during the Second World War."
--Ryszard Kapuscinski

"This book presents us with one of the most disgraceful ethical horrors of World War II -- how, believing the need to support Stalin at all costs, we discredited, and later neglected, our oldest, bravest, and most trustworthy ally in order to conceal the truth of a revolting crime."
--Robert Conquest

"The Polish airmen who had escaped their savaged country in 1939 made a major contribution to the Royal Air Force's victory in the Battle of Britain in 1940. 303 Squadron, which they formed, was the most successful of all RAF units in shooting down German aircraft, attempting to bomb Britain into surrender. Their subsequent treatment by the British government including its refusal to let the survivors march in the Victory Parade of 1946, in craven deference to Stalin, was one of the most shameful episodes of the Cold War."
--Sir John Keegan

"A gripping account of personal gallantry and of political treachery. On a par with the recent best-sellers about the fighting men of World War II."
--Zbigniew Brzezinski

Freedom's Daughters

"In simple but engaging prose, Olson offers a stunning portrait gallery of little-known heroines that will appeal to any reader interested in civil rights and women's history, and she explores the psychology behind the relationships between men and women, black and white, throughout a watershed period in American history."
--Publishers Weekly

"Several books have highlighted women's contributions to the Civil Rights movement, but none is as well written and extensive as this work by journalist and author Olson (The Murrow Boys)."
--Library Journal

". . . presents the stories of valorous women whose deeds helped change the face of the U.S. forever."
--Susan Brownmiller, New York Times Book Review

"With rigor and grace, she brings these female freedom fighters to the forefront of America's most powerful social movement."
--Washington Post

"The most stunning synthesis of women's role in America's endless and episodic struggle for racial equality to date."
--Ruth Rosen, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Freedom's Daughters pursues its larger themes boldly, deftly detailing history's intricate drama."
--People Magazine