John Withington is an award-winning television journalist and one of Britain's leading disaster historians. He is the author of A Disastrous History of the World (2008) and London's Disasters (2011),Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters (2011), Flood: Nature and Culture (Reaktion, 2013) and Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion, 2016).
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. --Tim Wilson, director, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), University of St Andrews