Georgi Markov and the poisoned umbrella

Exhibit in Spy Museum, Washington DC

The BBC journalist assassinated with a poison-tipped umbrella - In September 1978, Bulgarian dissident and journalist Georgi Markov was killed with a poisoned umbrella in London. The doctor who tried to save his life recalls what happened -BBC News

From an earlier posting on Corfu Blues (17th April, 2010)

Georgi Markov was buried in the churchyard at Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset.

Markov was the 49 year-old Bulgarian dissident novelist, playwright, opposition activist/BBC broadcaster in political exile, who was attacked on 7 September 1978 by an assassin on Waterloo bridge, allegedly with a pellet of ricin (the famous poison-tip umbrella case; the alleged assassin, working for the Bulgarian Secret Service, has since been named). Markov died four days later, on 11 September.

As Annabel Markov (Annabel Dilke), his widow, writes in her introduction to "Georgi Markov, The Truth that Killed" (London, 1983),

"My husband Georgi Markov is buried in an ancient and beautiful country churchyard in the West of England...he died, as his stone says, 'in the cause of freedom.'"


BBC 4 radio programme on the murder of Georgi Markov:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bgblcd