Review of "Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England" by Lynne Olson

Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England by Lynne Olson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Author Lynne Olson has done an excellent job of telling what the late Paul Harvey used to call "the rest of the story" in this narrative of a group of Tory party Members of Parliament who lead the initial opposition to the appeasement policies of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the years both the years preceding World War II and then the first year of that conflict.  Reading this book brought home to me the fact that Winston Churchill becoming Prime Minister in May, 1940 was by no means a "done deal" right up until the moment that Chamberlain stepped down and Churchill succeeded him.  While the sometime friends (of a sort) and almost always rivals Chamberlain and Churchill are central to the story, the book is actually about those "Troublesome Young Men" of the title who finally brought down Chamberlain, basically without help from Churchill, who refused to work against Chamberlain once he accepted the Admiralty position in the British Cabinet.

Focusing on some of the leaders of this group of outsiders in their own party, such as Harold Macmillan (a future Prime Minister decades later), Harold Nicolson  (remembered now for being the husband of writer Vita Sackville-West), and Ronald Cartwright (brother of romance novelist Barbara Cartwright) Olson tells what I thought was a compelling and interesting story, showing how history sometimes changes on the courage and decisions of a few persistent individuals.  I recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading history, particularly those readers interested in the years leading up to the start of World War II in Europe.



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