History of Assassination: my North London talk in January

I'm honoured to have been invited to speak again at the Crouch End & District u3a in North London, this time on the history of assassination.

Drawing on my book Assassins' Deeds. A History of Assassination from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day (Reaktion), I'll be talking about murder by poisoned umbrella or booby-trapped toy or killer disguised as a bear.

The most notorious assassinations will, of course, be there - Julius Caesar, Good King Wenceslaus, Thomas Becket, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, JFK, Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Kim Jong-nam, as well as the ones that got away: Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, Stalin, Queen Victoria. How might history have been different if their would-be killers had succeeded?

Because dynastic ambition was so often the motive, perpetrators were often spouses, parents, children or siblings. One Turkish sultan had 19 of his brothers strangled. The powerful have always tried to protect themselves, but that can misfire as a dozen or so Roman emperors were murdered by their guards. On the other hand, many victims seem to have been surprisingly careless. Abraham Lincoln had let his bodyguard go for a drink. 

I'll also be examining the thorny question of whether assassination works.

The talk is on 19 January at 1030. https://cedu3a.org.uk/monthly-meetings/

 

The comedian, the sculpture, the pop song, the book....and the assassins!

One of the exhibits at the 'Summer' Exhibition at London's Royal Academy is a collection of eight little wooden models by the comedian, Harry Hill. They carry clues - Ford's Theatre, Dealey Plaza. 

Ah! I realised, fresh as I was from writing Assassins' Deeds. A history of assassination from Ancient Egypt to the present day. (Reaktion books) The little models all represent the sites of famous, or notorious, assassinations.

As I wracked my brains to identify them all, I could have saved myself some trouble by looking at the catalogue. The title of the piece is Abraham, Martin, John, Mahatma, Leon, Che, Malcolm and John. So Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi, Leon Trotsky, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and John Lennon.

Is Hill's poignant piece inspired by the 1968 pop song Abraham, Martin and John, which was a hit for Dion? That mourns the deaths, and celebrates the lives of Lincoln, Martin Luther King and JFK, and concludes with the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Assassins-Deeds-History-Assassination-Ancient/dp/1789143519

Who let that thing out!? My new book 'Assassins' Deeds'

 

Out today. My new book Assassins’ Deeds. A history of assassination from Ancient Egypt to the present day. It does what it says on the cover.

Assassins’ Deeds identifies the earliest assassination in history so far as I can tell. An Egyptian pharaoh murdered about 4,300 years ago by his bodyguards. Then there is Britain’s first assassination in 293 AD – of Marcus Carausius, the self-styled ‘Emperor of Britain’, who was hired by the Romans to protect the south-east coast of England from Saxon raids, but was more interested in grabbing loot from the raiders than protecting the local residents.

I analysed 266 assassinations from ancient Egypt to the present day, and discovered the ace sniper of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal is a rarity. Most assassinations are up close and personal, with only 19 performed at a distance. Until the nineteenth century, stabbing was the favourite method, but even when firearms took over, it was usually the handgun at close quarters rather than the sniper’s rifle.

The book covers some of history’s weirdest assassinations – the king of Scotland killed by a booby-trapped statuette, the Swiss military leader hacked to death by a man disguised as a bear, and the Austrian empress murdered with a customised needle so fine the victim did not even realise she had been stabbed. She could count herself particularly unlucky as her assassin, an Italian anarchist, had been hoping to murder someone else, and she was a late substitute.

Fate moved in mysterious ways for some assassins too. An Italian nationalist was sentenced to the guillotine for a failed assassination attempt on the French emperor Napoleon III, but the emperor had a lot of sympathy for the would-be assassin’s cause of unifying Italy, and reprieved him at the last minute. He was sent to Devil’s Island for life, but escaped to the United States and went on to fight in and survive Custer’s Last Stand.

Then there is the story of King Zog of Albania, probably the only monarch to survive an assassination attempt by opening fire on the men who attacked him (as he was leaving the opera in Vienna).

Assassins Deeds’  also tells the story of history’s most famous assassinations – Julius Caesar, Thomas Becket, the French revolutionary Marat, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, John Lennon, etc., coming right up to the present day with the murder of Kim Jong-nam, renegade brother of the North Korean dictator, whose killers thought they were taking part in a reality tv show.

Assassins’ Deeds. A History of Assassination from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day by John Withington is published by Reaktion Books, price £18.

http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781789143515

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Assassins-Deeds-History-Assassination-Ancient/dp/1789143519

 

 

My new book 'Assassins' Deeds' - 'entertaining and haunting' says an expert on terrorism

Thank you to Dr Tim Wilson, Director, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), University of St Andrews, for his comments on my new book:

 ‘Like Shakespeare himself, Assassins’ Deeds offers us a stage memorably strewn with the most distinguished of corpses. ‘Bloody instructions’ (as Macbeth called them) are certainly to be found here in abundance. But there are also wise words about how often incompetence and unintended consequences derail the best laid plans. Assassination, Withington instructs us in entertaining style, is no exact science. A messy tale: and a haunting one.’

Assassins' Deeds. A History of Assassination from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day, published by Reaktion, is out on 12 October.

http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781789143515&aub=John+Withington&m=2&dc=4

It delves back 4,000 years to seek out the first known assassination, then examines the famous killings - Julius Caesar, Thomas Becket, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, right up to Qasem Soleimani, while also uncovering some less well-known deeds like those of the Turkish sultan who had nineteen of his brothers strangled. 

It examines how motivation has changed, and how methods often altered surprisingly little, in spite of great technological changes. It shows how often assassinations go wrong and how many victims were surprisingly careless. Abraham Lincoln had let his bodyguard go for a drink. Finally it investigates whether assassination works.

Amazing escape + air crashes over the ocean

A 14 year old Marseille girl plucked from the water appears to be the only survivor of yesterday’s air crash eight miles off the Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean. Rescuers spotted her swimming in rough waters among bodies and wreckage. They threw her a life buoy, but she could not grab it, then a man leapt into the water to save her. Altogether, there were about 153 people on board.

In the five deadliest aviation disasters over the world’s oceans, there were no survivors. The worst three were no accidents either. The worst of all involved the Air India 747 brought down by a terrorist bomb over the Atlantic in 1985, killing all 329 people on board.

Three years later, an American warship shot down an Iran Air Airbus over the Straits of Hormuz killing all 290 passengers and crew. The death toll was 269 – again everyone on board – when Soviet jets shot down Korean Air Lines flight 007 just west of Sakhalin island in 1983.

The worst ever accident involving a commercial airliner over the ocean came on July 17, 1996 when a TWA flight to Rome blew up in mid-air about 12 minutes after taking off from New York’s JFK airport. All 230 people on board were killed. At first, there was speculation that there might have been a bomb on the jumbo, but investigators concluded the most likely cause of the explosion was faulty wiring.