Introduction: the long history of assassination. Julius Caesar, Roman general and dictator, assassinated 44 BC - Birth of the Roman Empire. Caligula, Roman emperor, assassinated AD 41 - The invasion of Britain. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, assassinated 1170 - St Thomas. Conrad of Montferrat, Crusader leader, assassinated 1192 - The death of the lion. Lord Darnley, Consort of Mary, Queen of Scots, assassinated 1567 - The death of Mary, Queen of Scots. William I, "the Silent", ruler of the Dutch United Provinces, assassinated 1584 - Father of the Fatherland. The Two Henries, Henry, Duke of Guise, assassinated 1588, and Henry III of France, assassinated 1589 - Ending the Wars of Religion. Henry IV, King of France, assassinated 1610 - The Salic Law. 1st Duke of Buckingham, English royal favourite, assassinated 1628 - Buckingham and the English Civil War. Gustav III, King of Sweden, assassinated 1792 - "A Masked Ball". Jean-Paul Marat, French revolutionary, assassinated 1793 - Marat's legacy. Paul of Russia, Tsar of Russia, assassinated 1801 - Russia in the Napoleonic Wars. Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of Great Britain, assassinated 1812 - Perceval and the radicals. Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, assassinated 1865 - The Gettysburg Address. Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, assassinated 1881 - Serfdom. James Garfield, 20th President of the United States, assassinated 1881 - The Battle of Chickamauga. Lord Frederick Cavendish, Chief Secretary of Ireland, assassinated 1882 - The Fenians. Elisabeth of Austria, Empress of Austria-Hungary, assassinated 1898 - Anarchism. William McKinley, 25th President of the United States, assassinated 1901 - The Spanish-American War. Jose Canalejas, Prime Minister of Spain, assassinated 1912 - Primo de Rivera. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austro-Hungarian heir, assassinated 1914 - Gavrilo Princip. Rasputin, Russian royal favourite and mystic, assassinated 1916 - A British plot? Englebert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, assassinated 1934 - Austria in 1945. Alexander of Yugoslavia, King of Yugoslavia, assassinated 1934 - Louis Barthou and conspiracy theories. Huey Long, Governor of Louisiana, assassinated 1935 - Casting a long shadow. Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary, assassinated 1940 - Trotskyism. Reinhard Heydrich, Nazi officer, assassinated 1942 - Origins and endings. Lord Moyne, British colonial administrator, assassinated 1944 - Partitioning Palestine. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian political leader, assassinated 1948 - Partition. Folke Bernadotte, Swedish United Nations mediator, assassinated 1948 - US denial and UN succession. Faisal II, King of Iraq, assassinated 1958 - From coup to coup. Medgar Evers, US civil rights worker, assassinated 1963 - The Ku Klux Klan. John F. Kennedy, 36th President of the United States, assassinated 1963 - Jack Ruby. Malcolm X, US civil rights activist, assassinated 1965 - Black Power at the Olympics. Hendrik Verwoerd, President of South Africa, assassinated 1966 - Apartheid. Martin Luther King, US civil rights leader, assassinated 1968 - The March on Washington. Robert Kennedy, US politician, assassinated 1968 - Chicago 1968. Georgi Markov, expatriate Bulgarian dissident, assassinated 1978 - The end of a dictator. George Moscone and Harvey Milk, elected officials of San Francisco, assassinated 1978 - The Castro. Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, assassinated 1980 - The School of the Americas. Anwat al-Sadat, President of Egypt, assassinated 1981 - The road to al-Qaeda. Benigno Aquino, Filipino politician, assassinated 1983 - Imelda Marcos: life after death. Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, assassinated 1984 - After Indira. Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, assassinated 1995 - The raid on Entebbe. Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghan guerrilla commander, assassinated 2001 - The Taliban. Alexander Litvinenko, expatriate Russian dissident, assassinated 2006 - The new KGB. Epilogue: Benazir Bhutto. Index.