The assassination of Georgi Markov bore all the hallmarks of a Russian wet job

In September 1978 Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian émigré writer, waited at a bus stop on Waterloo Bridge on his way to work at the BBC World Service. Feeling a sting in his right thigh, he looked round to see the man behind him picking up his apparently fallen umbrella. The man apologised in a foreign accent and hastily crossed the road where he hailed a taxi. Markov felt feverish that night, was admitted to hospital and within four days was dead. ‘The bastards poisoned me,’ he told doctors, as they struggled to identify what was wrong with him.

What was wrong was ricin, a poison with no antidote. It was identified after Markov’s death by a combination of alert medical staff and scientists at the Porton Down research establishment. The ‘bastards’ were the communist government of Bulgaria, headed by the dictator Todor Zhivkov, who had ordered the murder.