The Umbrella Assassination: Introduction

This is the story of a book that was published but never sold, a tale of broken dreams, destroyed relationships and intimidation. It's about two ordinary women who risked publishing a book that delved into the secrets behind an open murder case. The murder of Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident. Only days after the book was launched with some notable international reviews, it was suppressed.

Now that Channel 5 is broadcasting a documentary next Wednesday and the story is out, I am breaking my twelve year silence on the subject. I attempted to contact Jack Hamilton, presenter of the TV programme, when he published a piece in the Times last year, but he never replied.

Since learning that the programme is going out, I have conducted exhaustive searches on the internet to locate journalists interested in the subject, the director of the film, the writers of the original book, the publisher (my former friend and colleague) Jane Tienne, in fact anyone connected with the subject. There isn't much.

What I have discovered is that the original book is being sold on the internet – by Amazon and other distributors. I knew nothing of this. The book, to my knowledge, has been under an injunction since September 1994 and I have never seen a penny for my significant investment in it.

The Umbrella Assassin Revealed UK Channel 5, Wed 17th May at 8.00pm
Journalist Jack Hamilton
Director Mark Radice
Producer, David Dugan
A PBS production

Synopsis of my story
I first met Jane when I was working in the publications department of a Cambridge publishing company. We lost touch after 1990 and didn't meet again until the spring of 1994.

Jane asked me if I'd like to get involved in a project she was working on. As the story unfolded I became more and more intrigued. She told me how she had recently worked for a publisher when the original manuscript, written by two Bulgarian journalists, had arrived at her desk. Nobody, it seemed, was interested in it, so she decided to contact the authors directly.

Vladimir Bereanu, a TV journalist in Sofia, and Kalin Todorov, a newspaper journalist, had been researching the story for four years. It made fascinating reading. Jane decided to set up her own company and publish the book herself, which was a very courageous, and as it turned out, foolhardy, decision. It appealed enormously to me and I agreed to invest my money and time in return for a percentage of the profits in due course, and so started an intense period of months editing and producing the book, designing the cover and layout and organising print, marketing and the launch.

We enlisted the help of marketing and PR experts, but with a limited budget, the bulk of the work was accomplished by the two of us. The launch date was fixed for September of that year, giving us less than six months to print and promote the book. Recently divorced, and self-employed, I was able to devote most of my time to TUM as we called it. Jane was also divorced and supporting two children. She worked as a freelance TEFL teacher to make ends meet. Even so, she was able to make a couple of trips to Sofia and took a long holiday just prior to the book launch, leaving me to tie up loose ends. Inevitably it put a strain on our friendship.

The book launch took place at the Clink Museum in London and we had reviews in most of the major papers, the European, the NY Times etc. The authors went on a radio road show for three weeks and things were looking good.

Then disaster struck. Jane was served with an injunction and we were forced to recall all the review copies and put the books under wraps. The printers, Pendragon Press near Cambridge, agreed to store them until we had worked out what to do. Jane sought legal advice and was unwilling to discuss her options with either me or our advisors. Things got very ugly between us and we stopped communicating.

I know Jane has suffered great financial hardship and I can only imagine the effect the whole experience has had on her. For my part I lost all my savings and am still recovering from the ME which laid me low for a long time. Periodically I tried to contact Jane over the following years but she was illusive. I kept in touch with the printers to begin with but eventually I had to accept that i would never see a penny of my investment. Effectively we were silenced by forces beyond our control. Suffice to say that I discovered David Shayler's website when he was in exile, and what he had to say about the book, and Jane's situation, made it clear that we had got ourselves into something much bigger than we could possibly have anticipated.

Last year I saw this article in the Times by Jack Hamilton and tried to contact him, but without success. That is a great pity because the forthcoming TV documentary is the result of his research.

I have many unanswered questions. I would like to hear from anyone who can throw some light on what happened to the original books, and who is profiting from their sale on the internet.

I will continue to add to the blog over the next few days. Comments are welcome but I do not guarantee they will be posted.