Giles Milton
speaker
1,435 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 3d ago
Giles Milton’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Anyway, um, so of course there is going to be a second attempt, and this time it's a Spanish communist named Raman Mercader.
He decides not to go with the uh familiar machine gun technique.
He decides to buy himself an ice axe.
What is the difference between an ice axe and an ice pick?
Now I'm not a mountaineer, I have to say.
I believe and you're gonna have so many people correcting this, I'm sure, but an ice pick, I believe, has two sharp ends, which would be a pretty effective way of killing somebody, I guess, if you sink it into their head.
An ice axe has one a pick on one end and a blunt sort of like a spade on the other end, I believe.
maybe he bought it in Spain.
I'm not sure where he bought it, it's terrifically important in the story.
You know, Stalin won't be saying, Where did you buy it by the way?
I'm
a probable way of being assassinated, anyway.
Yes, but Murkade, Merkades, he's obviously quite a clever guy.
He has built up a very close relationship with um one of the maids who works uh in the household.
She's called Sylvia Agolov.
I think she's a very good friend of Trotsky's wife, actually.
He makes friends with her, befriends her, and she allows him into the villa to, because he says he wants to talk with, have a little chat with Trotsky about something he's written.
gets into Trotsky's study, Trotsky starts talking about what he's writing about, something new thing he's writing about Stalin, at which point uh Mercader uh pulls out his Isaacs, which he's kept concealed beneath his coat, raises it above his head, and slams it into Trotsky's brain.
You might think that would kind of do you in, but Trotsky seems to be as we say, like Rasputin, seems to be made of stronger stuff
He's not killed by this blow to the head.
Showing 681–700 of 1,435 · page 35 of 72
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