Why Spencer Perceval Had to Die

''A beautifully written portrait of an overlooked prime minister and a fascinating account of his assassination during the Napoleonic Wars'' ANTONY BEEVOR, author of Stalingrad

Four American presidents have been assassinated, but in its much longer history, only one British prime minister. This is the untold story of that killing and its enormous repercussions.

On 11 May 1812 Spencer Perceval, the British Prime Minister, was fatally shot at close range in the lobby of the House of Commons. In the confused aftermath, his assailant, John Bellingham, made no effort to escape. A week later, before his motives could be examined, he was tried and hanged.

Here, for the first time, the historian Andro Linklater looks past the conventional image of Bellingham as a ''deranged businessman'' and portrays him as an individual, driven by personal anxieties and by the raw emotions that convulsed his home town of Liverpool. But as the evidence accumulates, a wider, darker picture emerges - John Bellignham was not alone in hating the prime minister.

Two hundred years later, Andro Linklater examines the ecidence and brilliantly deconstructs the assassination of Spencer Perceval - the only British Prime Minister ever to have suffered that fate - to offer a fresh perspective on Britain and the Western world at a critical moment in history.

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''Written with novelistic pace and the literary devices of a potboiler, the book is really two in one. The first, an overview of Perceval''s neglected career, is sure-footed and worthy. The second, a breathlessly conspiratorial account of his death, is compulsively readable'' WALL STREET JOURNAL

''Deftly sniffing out political machinations and murderous conspiracies, Linklater has written a richly atmospheric, engrossing and authoritative account of an assassination that, Linklater notes, shook the world 200 years ago as forcefully as JFK''s assassination did in our time'' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY