Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria

By Christy Campbell

Book Overview

A historical investigation into one of the most serpentine attempts on Queen Victoria's life that reveals for the first time the true instigator at the heart of government.

There were eight attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria during her long reign; four of them were of Irish origin. The most serious of all was the 'Jubilee Plot', a conspiracy apparently hatched in New York by the Fenian Brotherhood to blow up the Queen, her family and most of the British Cabinet with dynamite at the great service of thanksgiving to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her accession, held at Westminster Abbey in June 1887.The plot was 'uncovered' by Scotland Yard with just a few days to go. Several of the bombers were caught, tried and sentenced to penal servitude for life. But - warned off in time - the master bomber escaped to America...Now, using recently declassified Foreign Office Secret files (marked 'Fenian Brotherhood'), the author discloses for the first time the huge secret at the heart of the British counter-intelligence operation against militant Irish nationalists: the entire conspiracy was masterminded for its own reasons by a clandestine British agency reporting directly to the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000O8Q2JG
• ISBN13: 9780007104826
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 422 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

The Dirty War

The world's only global superpower is faced with terrorists in its greatest city, trying to destroy its major landmarks. These foreigners were born in one nation, a backward, oppressed land with an alien religion which, however, is of great geographic and strategic importance to the superpower. They are financed from another country, an immensely wealthy, so-called ally and friend of the superpower. To defeat these desperate men and their heinous ends, the superpower must engage them on their own terms, and fight a dirty war, which will prove corrosive to freedom and democracy at home, and only increase the hatred of the foreign land.The United States in 2001? Er, no, it's Great Britain in the 1880s, faced with Irish-American dynamiters who attacked Scotland Yard, the House of Commons, and, in spectacularly unsuccessful fashion, London Bridge. The British response to this threat is like John LeCarre rewritten by Flann O'Brien. The chief counter-terrorist securocrat in Gladstone's Liberal government, Jenkinson, is a convinced Home Ruler. With the aide of his double agents and informers within the Irish-American organizations, he sets a phony bomb plot to assassinate Queen Victoria in motion. By demonstrating the danger of Irish extremism, he hopes to convince British opinion of the need to conciliate moderate Irish nationalists with Home Rule. However, Gladstone's government falls, and Lord Salisbury's Tories take over. Vehemently opposed to Home Rule, Salisbury sees an opportunity to use the phony bomb plot to discredit Parnell's party, by linking Irish terrorists with Irish parlimentarians. Meanwhile, another Irish-American faction in Chicago decides to set up its own Jubilee plot, this time for real...Fenian Fire is an engaging and original history which (quite deliberately) reads like a thriller. I found it fascinating stuff, but like the spymasters and their convoluted and perplexing plot(s), the narrative occasionally threatens to run out of control.