If we may quote ourselves, “Movies have the Oscars. TV has the Emmys, Broadway the Tonys. And the conservative movement has the Bradley Prizes.” Last week, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation announced the first two recipients in its annual celebration of individual achievement in the cause of freedom (up to four awards are bestowed each year), and we’re delighted to congratulate Charles Murray and Andrew Roberts, both distinguished writers and both occasional contributors to these pages.
Roberts, a celebrated historian, has filled an imposing shelf in The Scrapbook’s study with highly readable volumes, among them biographies of Napoleon, Lord Salisbury, and Lord Halifax, as well as his engaging sequel to Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
Bradley Foundation president Michael W. Grebe rightly called Murray “an intellectual giant” as well as “a preeminent social scientist who has made monumental contributions to his chosen field.” The Scrapbook also has a shelf filled with Murray’s works and enthusiastically recommends all of them—from the pathbreaking 1984 work Losing Ground, which paved the way for welfare reform, to his heartfelt cry of rebellion against the regulatory state, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission (2015). We also heartily urge readers to listen (or relisten) to his extended conversation with our boss—available at conversationswithbillkristol.org—of which Murray said, “Bill Kristol draws me out on things I haven’t said elsewhere, except occasionally at dinner tables.”
