Backing and filling on Against the Day...and for Master of Petersburg plist readers

[Carvill, John]

Norman Stone is a plonker! Plus the 'assassination' of Ferdinand was a pretty botched job, the initial attempt(s) failed quite farcically, the would-be assassin biting down on an expired cynaide pill which just made him throw up, then he jumped in the Miljaka river which, as anyone who's ever seen it kmnows, only comes up to about ankle level, so isn't really suitable... Princip was a minor member of a group of about half a dozen conspiritors, who managed to shoot Ferdinand some time after the main assasination attempt, almost on a whim, having come out of a café and stumbled across the royal car. The man was an idiot, which may be why Norman Stone feels close to him.

I alwys thought the story of the assassination was going to make for a great sequence in ATD, but was disappointed by the Sarajevo section. I guess P thought it would be too obvious - but who else would set a historical novel in that timefrema, and have Franz F as a cameo character, and set a whole section in the Balkans, but omit the assassination itself?
 


<< I learned that Archduke Ferdinand, late of AtD, was assassinated by a 
"romantic" who learned from the Russian Nihilist real-life group written of in D's "The Possessed" and Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" [and "The Master of Petersburg"].

When asked before his death, whether he regretted Assassinating Ferdinand
and started a world war, said, "If I had not done it, The Germans would have found another excuse."...

The historian who quoted that, Norman Stone, basically agreed. >>