Ross Beadle: The Road to Sarajevo. The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand and the Balkan Origins of the First World War.
A bizarre and unlikely chain of events led to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914. This talk examines the sequence of chance events in the preceding 36 years, and even on the day of the killing, and why it was the trigger for war.
This is a return visit to the Branch by Ross Beadle, who has recently carried out a major revision of this lecture taking into account the latest publications. It is an extraordinary story with so many 'might have beens'. When Princip shot Franz Ferdinand, he was the 7th or even 8th to be in place to do the deed on that day. If the shooting had happened three years earlier, hardly anybody would have cared a jot.
Ross has a degree in History and Politics from Hull University, and an MA in First World War Studies from Birmingham. He has been lecturing to WFA branches since 2011 and writes for Stand To!, Bulletin and the Great War Group. In his real life he is a bookseller and small publisher