Thank you Boundless! History of assassination talk

Great to talk to people from the Boundless organisation last night about 'Assassins' Deeds', my history of assassination. It featured the famous ones - Julius Caesar, Good King Wenceslas, Thomas Becket, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Abraham Lincoln, JFK. But also the less well know, such as the only British prime minister to be murdered.

Then there were the weird ones - the booby trapped statuette, the assassination dressed up as a tv reality show, the killer disguised as a bear. And the ones that got away - Napoleon, Queen Victoria, Fidel Castro (more than 600 times), Adolf Hitler. Some good questions at the end too - which assassination would I have most liked to prevent, which assassin was the most misunderstood?

https://www.boundless.co.uk/events/online-events/a-history-of-assassination-from-ancient-egypt-to-the-present-day

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/

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/

 

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.

Storms in literature

Storms play an important role in a number of Shakespeare’s plays such as Macbeth and Julius Caesar, where they are harbingers of cataclysmic events, but he also uses them to bring twists to his plots – in Pericles, not once by twice. While in his last play, The Tempest, said to have been inspired by the real life adventure of the sailors who discovered Bermuda, a storm provides a way of plunging characters into a strange new world.

My new book Storm: Nature and Culture tells the story of the role played by storms in literature, as well as examining their place in art, films, religion and history.

One of the earliest uses in a novel of their ability to transport characters into a new world came from Daniel Defoe in his famous book from 1719, Robinson Crusoe, in which a shipwreck maroons the hero on a deserted island for 28 years. Defoe, incidentally, also wrote an account of England’s greatest ever storm in 1703.

In more recent literary storms, Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie (2011) sees a boy becoming one of a handful of survivors from a ship’s encounter with a waterspout – a marine tornado - and having to kill and eat his best friend, while in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001), another boy finds himself sharing a lifeboat with a hungry tiger.

There is much more on storms in literature in Storm: Nature and Culture published by Reaktion Books. Price £14.95.  ISBN 9781780236612