News Release

New York Times best-selling author Arthur Herman will give the second annual Patrick Henry Lecture at 4 p.m., on Tuesday, April 17, in Hodson Hall, Room 210, on The Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. The lecture is free and open to the public. For information, call 866-628-9892.

The title of Herman's lecture is "A Scottish Descent: The Origin of American Politics." Herman earned his doctorate in history from Johns Hopkins in 1985. He is the first will give the second annual non-Briton to serve on the Scottish Arts Council. He was the recipient of Fulbright and Andrew W. Mellon grants and won the Brittingham Prize for his doctoral thesis. His New York Times bestseller, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, was dubbed "a well-argued tribute to Scottish creative imagination and energy" and has sold more than a quarter of a million copies around the world. He has authored three other critically acclaimed books, one of which was nominated for the United Kingdom's Mountbatten Prize.

His next book, a full-length study of the 40-year rivalry between Mohandas Gandhi and Winston Churchill, is to be published in 2008. After teaching at Georgetown University and George Mason University, Herman became coordinator of the Western Heritage Program for the Smithsonian's Campus on the Mall from 2000 to 2005. Herman's columns appear often in the New York Post and Wall Street Journal Asia. He is also a frequent traveler to Australia, where he delivered the annual Bonython Lecture for the Centre for Independent Studies in 2006.

The lecture is funded by a $1 million gift from Margaret Nuttle, a great-great-great granddaughter of Patrick Henry. Nuttle's gift supports a post-doctoral fellowship, an undergraduate seminar, and an annual lecture, all focusing on pre-colonial or colonial history and featuring Patrick Henry. The widow of Philip E. Nuttle, a member of the Johns Hopkins University class of 1929, Margaret Nuttle hopes her gift to the university's departments of History and Political Science helps to promote a more balanced portrayal of Patrick Henry's life and times. Her aim is to stimulate a resurgence in the teaching of American history and political science. A resident of Easton, Md., Nuttle has been an active member of the university community since her husband's death in December 1996. She has hosted several events for the dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the president of the university. She also helped establish the Class of 1929 Endowed Scholarship.