Andrew Williams is a former BBC documentary maker and the author of
two best selling histories of the Second World War. His first
novel, The Interrogator was short listed for two CWA awards, and was
both Shots’ historical novel and The Daily Mail’s debut thriller of
2009. His second novel is set in the Russia of tsars and
revolutionaries at the end of the nineteenth century. In this
feature, Andrew explains how the story of To Kill A Tsar began, not
in Russia but on the streets of Belfast and Derry.
Tony Miller was one
of the IRA’s most successful bombers. After fourteen years I can
still picture the hard lines of his face as he described how he
reduced the centre of Derry to a pile of rubble.
‘Why bomb your own
city?’
‘Why? Because the
IRA instructed me to do so.’
Tony Miller took
pride in his work. In the two years I spent making a BBC series on
the IRA I met many men like Miller, single minded, prepared to bomb
and kill, prepared to risk imprisonment and death for their cause.
The H Blocks of the Maze Prison where ten IRA terrorists starved
themselves to death for political status has never left my
imagination. Perhaps it was there the spark for the story that has
become To Kill A Tsar was kindled.
Ten years after the
IRA documentaries, a dozen programmes, two children, and a move from
London to Edinburgh later, I began researching the first Russian
revolutionaries for another BBC series. Different countries,
different cultures, a hundred years of history separate these
Russian terrorists from the members of the IRA I’d met and yet I was
struck at once by the similarities in their stories.
First a little
history: in the summer of 1879, a small band of seasoned
revolutionaries formed the first major terrorist group of modern
times – The People’s Will. For two years its members waged
relentless ‘war’ on Tsar Alexander II and his government. This
campaign of assassinations and bombings forms the backdrop to the
story I tell in To Kill A Tsar. Members of The People’s
Will took the sort of quasi religious pledge an Al-Qaeda
volunteer would recognise – to renounce love, ties of family and
friendship, and to give their lives if necessary for the
revolution. These demands ‘freed us from every petty or personal
consideration’, wrote Vera Figner, one of the group’s
leaders; ‘if they had not stirred one’s spirit so profoundly, they
would not have satisfied us’.
For Figner - and
many terrorists since – this promise to offer her own life for the
group’s cause helped absolve her in her own mind of the guilt she
might have felt at the taking of other peoples’ lives. Like a cult
- the tougher the vows, the greater the sacrifice the better. The
imprisonment and death of members of the group – ‘our martyrs’ -
only helped to stiffen the resolve of those who were left.
Avenging lost comrades became almost as important as the revolution
itself and made compromise with the authorities an impossibility.
As any soldier will tell you, it’s easier to die for a friend than a
cause. Looking back many years later at her life inside the
terrorist group, Figner admitted that it had ‘created a cult of
dynamite and the revolver, and crowned the terrorist with a halo -
murder and the scaffold acquired a magnetic charm’ for young
people. Disenfranchised, disillusioned with the state, they were
excited by secrecy and comradeship, by adventure and danger and
killing. And so it was for many of the young men and women who
became terrorists in Northern Ireland.
The hero of To
Kill A Tsar, Dr. Frederick Hadfield shares my fascination
with this ‘cult of dynamite and the revolver’. He is a member of St
Petersburg’s Anglo-Russian community, a foreigner, a liberal – a
sort of 19th century champagne socialist – viewed with
mistrust by conservatives and revolutionaries alike. For a time,
he enjoys the adventure of associating with women wanted by the
tsar’s secret police, he helps at the clinic they run for the poor,
and he admits to sympathy for their cause, but he is outspoken in
his opposition to terror. Then he falls for someone he shouldn’t, a
committed member of ‘the cult of dynamite’, a woman like Figner who
has taken a vow to free herself from ‘petty personal consideration’
- from love. What does the man of principle do? He is in danger
of being drawn deeper and deeper into a conspiracy to assassinate
the tsar. Is the woman he loves too tightly locked inside the self
righteous bubble of the group to consider a different life?
To Kill A Tsar
is the story of the British liberal – you and me – tested by love
and the hour in a country sliding towards revolution.
Publisher: John Murray (8 July 2010) £18.99
Read an excerpt:
pdf
file
For more background
on To Kill A Tsar visit
www.andrewwilliams.tv
Read our review:
here
JOHN MURRAY and SHOTS
offer ONE lucky reader a signed UK
First Edition of To Kill A Tsar plus the paperback of THE
INTERROGATOR. Plus 3 follow up prizes of a signed UK First
Edition of To Kill A Tsar
All you have to do is answer
this simple competition and send and email along with your name and
postal address to
shotscomp@yahoo.co.uk
Closing
date for entries is midnight Sunday 26th September 2010.
Q Name the Tsar who
is the “target” in the book. Is it:
[a] Tsar Nicholas I
[b] Tsar Alexander I
[c] Tsar Alexander II
[d] Tsar Nicholas II
Terms and conditions
-
Closing
date for entries is 26.09.2010
-
First prize
is a signed UK First Edition of TO KILL A TSAR and a signed
paperback of THE INTERROGATOR
-
The follow
up prize consists of 3 signed UK first edition of TO KILL A
TSAR
-
All correct
entries will be entered into a prize draw and the first
correct answer picked at random on 26.09.2010 will be
declared the winner of the book.
-
The winner
will be notified by email within 14 days of the promotion
closing date and is required to accept their prize by email
or phone call within 14 days of notification. In the event
of non-acceptance within the specified period, the promoter
reserves the right to reallocate the prize to the next
randomly drawn correct and valid entry.
-
The winner
will be notified within 28 days of the closing date
-
No
responsibility can be accepted for lost or misplaced
entries
-
The prize
is non-transferable and there is no cash alternative
-
Only one
entry per person
-
Incorrect or
illegible answers or entries received after the entry date
will not be entered into the prize draw
-
The judges
decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into
-
No
geographical restrictions