Assassins' Deeds - my podcast interview with BBC History Magazine

Very interesting to be interviewed about my latest book Assassins' Deeds. A History of Assassination from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day (Reaktion Books) by Rachel Dinning of BBC History Magazine for their podcast.

We ranged over: 

what was history's first assassination?

when and where were the powerful and famous most at risk of assassination? 

how negligent were targets about their own safety?

do assassinations work, and what unintended consequences have they had?

what are assassins' favourite methods?

how many victims were not the assassin's first target?

what kind of people become assassins? 

what are history's strangest assassinations?

who was the world champion at surviving assassination attempts?

what were the ethical arguments put forward in favour of assassination and who advanced them?

the murder of Wat Tyler, of Mary, Queen of Scots' husband, Lord Darnley, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the assassin who nearly killed Hitler, women assassins

You can hear the podcast here https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/assassinations-from-the-ancient-world-to-jfk/

Good Queen Bess

On this day….441 years ago, a somewhat half-hearted uprising against Queen Elizabeth I began in the northern counties of England. This was a part of her realm she had never visited, and where attachment to Roman Catholicism remained strong.

On November 14, 1569, 300 armed horsemen rode into Durham. They entered the cathedral, ripped up English bibles and prayer books and declared that no more Protestant services would be held there. Then a huge crowd turned up to hear a Catholic mass.

All over the North, people began replacing communion tables with high altars and restoring Catholic services, while the rebels marched south, hoping to free the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, who was Elizabeth’s prisoner. But when they had got as far as Wetherby, their leaders lost their nerve, and told them to go home.

If the rebellion was half-hearted, the repression that followed it certainly wasn’t. The queen’s instructions were that rich rebels should be put on trial, while the poor were just to be summarily hanged. At one point, Elizabeth complained about how few executions there had been of the “meaner sort of rebels”, and in the end around 500 were put to death, while beggars became a common sight in the North, as many families were reduced to destitution.