The history of assassination roadshow hits Wootton

Looking forward to delivering one of the famous Wootton Village Hall talks in Oxfordshire on Friday. Subject - the history of assassination. I'll be talking about the world's first assassination; asking whether London was the scene of the world's first assassination by firearm; examining the surprising carelessness of some victims - like Abraham Lincoln, who let his bodyguard go off for a drink; and telling the story of the weird ones - murder by booby-trapped statuette, poisoned umbrella and man disguised as bear. 

Drawing on my book Assassins' Deeds. A History of Assassination from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day (Reaktion Books), I'll also be detailing the most famous ones - such as Julius Caesar, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, JFK, as well as the not very famous British prime minister who was the only one to be assassinated. 

And, of course, Friday being Valentine's Day, the talk will include a love story. All proceeds go to the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

http://www.woottontalks.co.uk/

Assassins' Deeds: Hit the Road, John!

The Assassins' Deeds roadshow reaches Stanmore on 15 January as I talk to Stanmore & District u3a about my history of assassination from ancient Egypt to the present day.

https://u3asites.org.uk/stanmore/events

Expect stories about the earliest assassination known to history, the killer in a bear's costume, the president whose bodyguard went for a drink while he was murdered, the near misses that spared Napoleon, Hitler and Queen Victoria, and much, much more.

Assassins' Deeds is published by Reaktion Books https://www.amazon.co.uk/Assassins-Deeds-History-Assassination-Ancient/dp/1789143519/ref=sr_1_1?crid=WZBLPD8WMXM2&keywords=assassins+deeds&qid=1702309122&sprefix=assassins+deeds%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1

How assassins work and does assassination work? My podcast now available

 

What motivates assassins? What are their favourite methods? What was the first assassination in history? What was the strangest? What was the first terrorist group? And does assassination work?

These are some of the questions Matt Lewis asked me in a wide-ranging podcast interview about assassinations over more than four thousand years from ancient Egypt to the present day, drawing on my book Assassins’ Deeds (Reaktion). 

Follow the link to access the podcast – mine is episode 7. The series is inspired by the popular video game Assassin's Creed.

https://pod.link/1615075257

My history of assassination: 'Assassins' Deeds'. Two American professors say it will be 'the definitive treatment of its subject for years to come'! How kind!

 

'As Withington observes in Assassins’ Deeds, his detail-rich study of the form from ancient times to the present, more often than not the best-laid plans of would-be history-changers go unrealized, as the new tends to replicate the old and the iron law of unintended consequences does its grim work. . . . Impressively researched and engagingly narrated, Assassins’ Deeds will likely stand as the definitive treatment of its subject for years to come.'

So write Jerald Podair, Professor of History and Robert S. French, Professor of American Studies, Lawrence University.  The full review is here:

 https://clcjbooks.rutgers.edu/books/assassins-deeds-a-history-of-assassination-from-ancient-egypt-to-the-present-day/

Assassins' Deeds is published by Reaktion Books. It tells how assassins have been killing the powerful and famous for at least 3,000 years. Personal ambition, revenge and anger have encouraged many to violent deeds, such as the Turkish sultan who had nineteen of his brothers strangled or the bodyguards who murdered a dozen Roman emperors. More recently have come new motives like religious and political fanaticism, revolution and liberation, with governments also getting in on the act, while many victims seem to have been surprisingly careless – Abraham Lincoln was killed after letting his bodyguard go for a drink.

So do assassinations work? Drawing on anecdote, evidence and statistical analysis, Assassins’ Deeds delves into some of history’s most notorious acts, unveiling an intriguing cast of characters, ingenious methods of killing, and those unintended consequences.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Assassins-Deeds-History-Assassination-Ancient/dp/1789143519/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=assassins%27+deeds&qid=1629191824&s=books&sr=1-1 

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

 

 

Coming soon: the true history of assassination - 'Assassins' Deeds'

It's on its way. And you won't even have to stop self-isolating to get it! Amazon already promoting my history of assassination from the pharaohs of Egypt to the present day - Assassins' Deeds.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Assassins-Deeds-History-Assassination-Ancient/dp/1789143519/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=assassins%27+deeds&qid=1584555257&s=books&sr=1-4&swrs=ED2339C323DC15C056800E80B4EC515C

Storm god = top god

When you think of how terrifying and awesome storms can be, it is not too surprising that in ancient religions the top god was often the storm god whether it was Zeus brandishing his thunderbolt, Thor with his magic hammer, or Indra riding his multi-tusked elephant.

My new book Storm: Nature and Culture features some of the fascinating stories surrounding them - such as of how a wicked giant stole Thor’s hammer and demanded the hand of a princess in marriage as the price of its return. Thor disguised himself as the bride, and managed to escape detection at the wedding ceremony in spite of eating an ox and eight salmon. Then he grabbed the hammer and killed the giant.

The Maoris told of how the sky god made love so endlessly to the earth goddess that their children could never get out of her womb. Eventually one of the young gods managed to prise them apart, but this upset the storm god Tawhirimatea who had been quite happy inside his mother, and now became an unruly presence on land and sea.

Some rulers tried to imitate their storm god – such as a pre-Roman king of Alba Longa in Italy who declared he was more powerful than Jupiter. When it thundered, he ordered his soldiers to bang their shields to drown out the noise. He is said to have been struck dead by lightning.

Storms also play an important role in the Bible. A fearful rainstorm generates Noah’s flood, the mother of all hailstorms is one of the plagues of Egypt, Jonah is swallowed by a great fish after a storm at sea, and Christ calms a tempest on the Sea of Galilee. 

For more, see Storm: Nature and Culture published by Reaktion Books.

A mysterious Halloween air crash

ISIS has claimed responsibility for bringing down the Russian Airbus A321 over Sinai, though it is fair to say that at present, not many believe them, with the authorities blaming a technical fault. What is clear is that 224 passengers and crew have been killed.

Halloween saw another mysterious air crash in 1999, when an EgyptAir Boeing 767 from New York to Cairo crashed into the Atlantic about 60 miles off Nantucket Island, killing all 217 people on board.

America’s National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the aircraft had been deliberately crashed by the first officer. The cockpit voice recorder (pictured) revealed that the captain had left the cockpit to go to the toilet, and that the first officer then began constantly repeating: ‘I rely on God’, as the autopilot was disconnected, and the engines shut down, leaving the aircraft plummeting towards the sea.

The Egyptians, though, rejected this explanation, saying a mechanical fault was the ‘likely cause’.

*Here I am doorstepping Tony Benn, then the Secretary of State for Industry, as crisis envelopes the British motorcycle industry in 1974 -

http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-08111974-anthony-wedgwood-benn-in-birmingham/MediaEntry/22215.html

More bloody football

The stampede at a Cairo football match which cost 22 fans their lives is the second major football disaster in Egypt in just 3 years. In February 2012, 74 fans were killed in a riot at a match in Port Said.

Since then, the authorities have limited the number of supporters allowed into matches. Only 5,000 tickets are said to have been made available for Sunday’s game between Zamalek and ENPPI at a ground which could hold 30,000.

The authorities claim that fans without tickets tried to storm the ground, while supporters say police fired tear gas and bird shot as they were being forced to go through a fenced-in passageway about 12 feet (3.7m) wide, causing the fatal stampede.

The match went ahead, but football has now once again been suspended in Egypt. President al-Sisi has promised an investigation into the disaster, but relations between the security services and football supporters are known to be strained because of the part played by fans in bringing down President Mubarak.  (See also my blogs of 2 February, 2012 and 29 January, 2013.)

Ferry disasters - al-Salam Boccaccio 98 nine years on

On this day............9 years ago, the al-Salam Boccaccio 98, a roll-on, roll-off ferry, set sail from Duba in Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea to Safaga in southern Egypt, carrying 96 crew and 1,312 passengers. It would never get there.

A couple of hours into the voyage, a fire broke out among the 220 vehicles on the car deck. Repeated attempts to put it out failed, and at about one o' clock on the morning of 3 February, 2006, the ship began to list alarmingly.

Within a few minutes she sank, without any of her bigger lifeboats getting launched, and people had to get away as best they could in rubber dinghies. More than 1,000 perished. For the full story see A Disastrous History of the World.

IHS Maritime and Trade Intelligence says that over the last ten years, 4,784 lives have been lost in accidents involving large ferries.  The worst year was 2011, when IHS says 1,642 people died. On September 10 of that year, the Spice Islander 1 sank off Zanzibar, with a death toll estimated at up to 1,500.

 

Egyptian government accused of crimes against humanity

Israel’s assistant in the illegal blockade of Gaza, the Egyptian government, has been accused of crimes against humanity by the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch.

The group claims it committed mass murder in its violent suppression of protests in Cairo last summer, which cost more than 1,000 lives, and calls for the country’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, and at least nine other senior security officials to be investigated for their role in the massacres.

According to its report, the Egyptian authorities presided over ‘one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history’ when they forcibly dispersed two big protest camps on August 14, 2013, leaving about 900 people dead.

One of those HRW wants investigating is Mohamed Farid el-Tohamy, head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, who met US Secretary of State, John Kerry, in Washington in April.

Deadliest ever balloon accident?

A couple of years ago, I took a flight at dawn in a hot air balloon over Cappadocia in Turkey.  It was an unforgettably beautiful and thrilling experience, but you were always conscious that you were being kept in the air only by a roaring flame just above your head.

Unfortunately, something went horribly wrong on a flight 1,000 feet over Luxor in Egypt this morning, when a balloon caught fire, exploded and fell to the ground, killing up to 19 tourists.   Two people are thought to have survived what may have been the deadliest balloon accident ever.

An eyewitness in another balloon reported seeing people jump out of the stricken craft.  There are suggestions that it may have hit an overhead power line. 

In 2009, another balloon came down over Luxor after hitting a communications tower, but accidents are mercifully rare.  Until today, the deadliest ever was probably the mid-air collision over Alice Springs in Australia in 1989 which brought one balloon to earth with the loss of 13 lives.

Bloody football

More than 100 people have now died as a result of a football rivalry in Egypt, and many more deaths could soon follow.    The disaster began with a riot in Port Said last year at a match between al-Masry and Cairo’s al-Ahly, in which more than 70 fans died. 

Last weekend, a court in Port Said sentenced 21 people to death for their part in the disorder.  Following the verdicts, protestors clashed with police, and more than 30 more lives were lost.  

But there is also a political dimension to the trouble.   At the time of the original riot, the Muslim Brotherhood alleged that the violence was orchestrated by supporters of the ousted regime of President Mubarak.

Now the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi is president, and the football protests have become mixed up with demonstrations against what opponents see as his undemocratic approach, leading to dozens of deaths across the country.   (See also my blog of 2 Feb, 2012)

*Another review of Historia mundial de los desastres.  http://www.tiempo.com/ram/29343/historia-mundial-de-los-desastres/

 

Football disasters

At least 74 people have been killed and hundreds injured in a riot after a football match between two of Egypt’s top teams - Port Said’s al-Masry and Cairo’s al-Ahly (flag pictured above).   Al-Masry won the game, and at the final whistle their fans invaded the pitch and attacked rival players and supporters, while part of the stadium was set on fire.

Although some rioters were said to have been armed with knives and metal bars, most injuries appear to have been caused by a stampede of spectators desperate to escape from the ground.

Some observers are claiming that the normal police presence for a match of this kind had been scaled down, and there are theories that there may have been some kind of concerted attack on al-Ahly fans, who are seen as having been in the forefront of recent protests against the security forces.

The world’s worst football disaster came in Lima in 1964, when a goal was disallowed in the last minute of an Olympic qualifying match between Peru and Argentina.   More than 300 people died as a riot in the stadium spread into the centre of the city.     There too, many of those killed were crushed trying to escape the trouble.

(See also my blogs of February 6 and March 30, 2009, January 2, 2010.)

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 15 - Khartoum

General Charles George Gordon was one of the loosest cannons ever to infiltrate the highest echelons of the British army.   The peace-loving Prime Minister, William Gladstone, should really have known better, but in January 1884 he hired Gordon to organise the evacuation of Egyptian garrisons from the Sudan.

In Egypt, Britain called the shots, but Sudan was a greyer area, and for more than two years, a local leader known as the ‘Mahdi’ had been on a mission to purify Islam and take over the country.

Instead of evacuating the capital, Khartoum, Gordon mounted a dramatic stand that lasted for 342 days, at the end of which the general and many others in the city were killed.   A British rescue expedition arrived just two days later, but beat a hasty retreat before the Mahdi’s overwhelming numbers.

Gordon’s ordeal was followed intently by people all over the world, and when it ended, it was Gladstone who got the blame.    His previous nickname – G.O.M. – ‘Grand Old Man’ was modified to M.O.G. – ‘Murderer of Gordon’.

Lightning strikes

Eighteen children and a teacher have been killed after lightning struck a school in the Masindi area of Uganda.     It is the second time the Runyanya Primary School has been hit.    In 2001, a lightning strike injured three people.

Across Uganda, another 12 people have been killed by lightning during the last week.   Meterologists say the reason for the strikes is a surge of moist air coming through the Congo Basin, but the government has also admitted that many buildings are not fitted with lightning conductors.

Perhaps the deadliest ever incident involving a lightning strike came in 1769 at Brescia in Italy, when the Church of St Nazaire was struck, setting fire to 100 tons of gunpowder stored in its vaults.    The resulting explosion is said to have destroyed a sixth of the city, and killed 3,000 people.

More recently, in November 1994, fuel tanks were struck at Dronka in central Egypt.     469 people died in the explosion that followed.

Disaster convictions - Bhopal etc

The eight Indians convicted for their part in the Bhopal disaster have all been sentenced to two years in prison, though one will not serve his time as he died during the 25 years the victims waited for justice. Campaigners such as Amnesty International and the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal have condemned the sentences as completely inadequate.

This feeling is not unusual. A fire in a supermarket in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion in 2004 killed 432 people, wiping out many whole families. It was alleged that fire exits had been locked, and the two owners and a security guard were put on trial.

In 2006, they were all sentenced to five years in prison, but families of the victims were enraged, and rioted. Two years later, the Supreme Court declared the sentences for the owners too lenient and increased them to ten and twelve years, but hundreds still protested.

After the Egyptian ferry, the al-Salam Boccaccio 98 , sank following a fire on board with the loss of more than 1,000 lives in 2006, an official inquiry concluded that she did not have enough lifeboats and that fire-fighting equipment had been inadequate. The owner and two other people were convicted, but all of them had left the country before the trial. For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Peruvian bus crashes - 2

At least 38 people have been killed in another serious bus crash in Peru. Two buses collided head-on on the Panamerican highway, one of Peru’s busiest roads, about 300 miles north of Lima.

Bus crashes are common in Peru. Less than a fortnight ago, 17 people died when two buses collided in Quispicanchi province in the south of the country, and in December a bus plunged down a ravine in the Andes killing 42. (see my blog of Dec 29) The country has now secured a loan of £100 million from the World Bank to improve its roads.

Internationally comparable figures on road deaths are hard to come by, but they suggest that most of the countries with the most dangerous roads are in Africa. Eritrea has an annual rate of 48.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, Egypt 41.6, Libya 40.5, Angola and Niger 37.7, the Gambia 36.6 and Mauritania 35.5. Afghanistan has a rate of 39, Iraq 38.1 and Iran 35.8.

In this company, Peru’s 21.5 seems fairly modest, though the UK’s rate is just 5.4, and the Netherlands 4.8. (see also my blog of Jan 5)

Haiti in historical perspective

If the estimates we are now hearing of 200,000 people killed in the Haiti earthquake are accurate, that would make it probably the eighth deadliest in history. The worst may have been one that hit the eastern Mediterranean region in 1201 or 1202, devastating countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Palestine. Some say this disaster claimed more than a million lives, though many of these may actually have perished in the famine that was raging through Egypt about the same time.

Better documented is the quake that devastated Shaanxi province in China in 1556, killing up to 830,000 people, many of whom had been living in man-made caves they had dug into the soft soil. Perhaps third worst was the quake of 526 that destroyed Antioch in modern-day Turkey. Known as "the Fair Crown of the Orient", it had been the third biggest city in the Roman Empire, and was the place where the word "Christian" was first used to describe the followers of Jesus. The death toll was said to be 300,000.

In more modern times, the Chinese earthquake in Tangshan in 1976 was officially said to have killed 242,000, though the Chinese government did not admit to this figure until three years afterwards. Unofficial estimates put the death toll as high as 655,000. More recently, the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 claimed 230,000 victims.

Israel: "we're a bit sorry"

A year after its merciless assault on Gaza that killed 1,400 people, Israel has agreed to pay $10 million compensation to the United Nations for destroying or damaging stores, schools, offices and vehicles funded by the organisation in the desperately impoverished besieged enclave.

Israel claimed that Hamas fighters were operating near or in UN buildings, but a UN inquiry rejected its arguments, and accused the Israeli military of “negligence or recklessness”, saying that the deaths of civilians should be investigated under international law. In one of the worst incidents, Israel fired mortars in the "immediate vicinity" of a school being used to shelter Palestinians who had fled from their homes, killing up to 40 people.

Meanwhile, life for the Palestinians goes on much as usual. On Friday, three people, including a 14 year old boy, were killed by Israeli air strikes, the Egyptians have been preventing an aid convoy carrying much-needed clothing and medical equipment from crossing into the territory, and President Obama’s half-hearted attempts to establish a Palestinian state have got precisely nowhere.