We are pleased to continue our Distinguished Lecture Series, now in its 17th season. On Sunday, January 21, 2024 at 4:00 p.m. James Conroy will discuss his new book The Devils Will Get No Rest: FDR, Churchill, and the Plan That Won the War.
The Devils Will Get No Rest is a character-driven account of the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, an Anglo-American clash over military strategy that produced a winning plan when World War II could have gone either way. Churchill called it the most important Allied conclave of the war. Until now, it has never been explored in a full-length book.
In a secret, no-holds-barred, ten-day debate in a Moroccan warzone, protected by British marines and elite American troops, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, George C. Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton Jr., Sir Alan Brooke, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Sir Harold Alexander, and their military peers questioned each other’s competence, doubted each other’s vision, and argued their way through choices that could win or lose the war. You will be treated to a master class in strategy by the legendary statesmen, generals, and admirals who overcame their differences, transformed their alliance from a necessity to a bond, forged a war-winning plan, and glimpsed the postwar world.
Photo by David Welch
About the author: James B. Conroy is an award-winning author and an Honorary Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Having worked on Capitol Hill as a Senate press secretary and a congressman’s chief of staff and served for six years in the Naval Air Reserve, Conroy graduated magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center and practiced law in Boston until 2020. His first book, Our One Common Country, was a finalist for the prestigious Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. His second, Lincoln’s White House, shared the Lincoln Prize and won the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s annual book award. He and his wife, Lynn, divide their time between Hingham, Massachusetts, and Martha’s Vineyard.
Now in its 17th season, the Distinguished Lecture Series is organized and hosted by Dr. Jeremy Yudkin. Dr. Yudkin is a resident of the Berkshires and Professor of Music and Co-Director of the Center for Beethoven Research at Boston University. Every summer at the Lenox Library he presents the pre-concert lectures for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season.
All programs in the Distinguished Lecture Series are free and open to the public.