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

I-Spy Paris. Not the Arc de Triomphe

 I-Spy Paris. Not the Arc de Triomphe, but an arc de triomphe. The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, by the Tuileries Gardens close to the Louvre. Erected in 1808 to celebrate Napoleon's victories in Italy. Its better known cousin at Place Charles de Gaulle was not finished until 1836. This arc has been undergoing restoration work and on the day I visited, it was still cordoned off.

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

The Great Fire of Moscow

On this day…..198 years ago, Napoleon entered Moscow. It was virtually deserted, and the French army was unnerved by the eerie silence. In some parts of the city, fires were burning.

The next day, a strong wind began whipping up the flames, setting ablaze the stores on Red Square and soon burning debris had spread the fire to the Kremlin where the emperor had set up his headquarters. French soldiers interrupted their looting to help him out of the city.

By the following day, the whole of Moscow was ablaze, and many of the French army decided to follow their leader and get the hell out. Eventually rain put the flames out, but not before three-quarters of the city had gone up in smoke. An estimated 2,000 wounded Russians and up to 20,000 wounded French soldiers perished, plus an unknown number of Russian civilians.

Who started the fire? The Russians blamed the French, and the French blamed the Russians. Certainly the Russians had burned down depots holding ammunition, food and forage to deny them to the invaders. On the other hand, the French had been plundering and fires they started may have got out of control. For the story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Dubrovnik

Just back from Dubrovnik. My first visit, and it was just about possible to discern through the fog of a million visitors what a delightful jewel it is. It might be even more delightful if it had been spared a devastating earthquake in 1667 that destroyed most of the city and killed 5,000 people.

The famous city walls and some notable buildings survived, like the Sponza Palace, the Rector's Palace and St Saviour's Church. I was disappointed to see how many of the churches were locked, without any apparent information as to when they would open.

The earthquake hit Dubrovnik when it was a prosperous independent republic, but it never really recovered, and in 1802 it was conquered by Napoleon, and then handed over to the Austrian Empire after the French Emperor's defeat.

In more recent times, Dubrovnik got caught up in Yugoslavia's civil war, and was struck by 2,000 shells during 1991-2. The Sponza and Rector's Palaces were seriously damaged as were two in three of the city's characteristic red-roofed houses. Outside the old city, many walls still bear the marks of bullets and shrapnel.