‘In Sarajevo a hundred years ago, a teenage assassin named Gavrilo Princip killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Born a penniless backwoodsman, Princip’s life changed when he trekked through Bosnia and Serbia to attend school. Radicalisation slowly transformed him from a frail farm boy into history’s most influential assassin.’The author, Tim Butcher, is going to retrace ‘Princip’s journey from his highland birthplace, through the mythical valleys of Bosnia to the fortress city of Belgrade and ultima...

Wanderlust Journalism. Tim Butcher is an English journalist, who like so many from the United Kingdom has a relative who fought in the First World War, sadly in the case of his great uncle he perished. For me, my grandfather’s older brother was captured on the Somme and this survived the slaughter. Butcher, was born into a country and a century reflective of this great event which changed the course of history and as such, has thought much about the Great War. This book explores the catalyst to ...

This book is equal parts biography, memoir, history, and travelogue. Tim Butcher travels Gavrilo Princip’s path from a small village in Herzegovina to Sarajevo to Belgrade and back to Sarajevo, where Princip fired the shots that took the life of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. This act is often cited as the spark than launched the Great War. During Butcher’s trek, he recalls his time as a journalist reporting on the Bosnian War in the 1990s. Covering Bosnian history from three tim...

Born in a village on the remote western edge of Bosnia, Princip had undergone a process of radicalization at the schools he attended across the region, a journey that culminated in the assassination in Sarajevo Eventually the author Tim Butcher gets around to telling us the story of Gavril Princip and the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28th 1914 in Sarajevo. This event was the seminal trigger that set in motion World War I just a month later. To be...

Really not for me. I felt deceived by the title which suggests an examination of the life of Gavrilo Princip who assassinated Arch-duke Ferdinand leading to the outbreak of the First World War. I also expected some discussion of Serbian nationalism. There is some of that in this book - but in the main it is a travelogue of the author in the former Yugoslavia which I was not that interested in. Much of this was focused on personal experiences of the author.I have read Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas o...

Subtitled, “The Hunt for Gavrilo Princip; The Assassin who Brought the World to War,” this is part biography, part history and part travel book. Indeed, it is written by Tim Butcher, who is probably best known for his travel writing and whose interest in Gavrilo Princip was first aroused when he was a young reporter in Serajevo during the Bosnian War in the 1990’s. He recalls how he witnessed locals using a stone building as a makeshift lavatory, only to discover they were desecrating a memorial...

I wasn’t especially interested in the subject of this book, Gavrilo Princip, to begin with; I read it because I had been impressed by one of Tim Butcher’s earlier books, Blood River, an exciting and well-written account of a long and dangerous journey through Central Africa. Like Blood River, The Trigger is a mixture of history, travelogue and journalism – a format Butcher does very well. It is just as good as Blood River, and I ended up being very interested in Princip indeed.The outline of the...

A concise, compelling, accessible book that is part history, part travelogue, part memoir and wholly unmissableA fascinating investigation into the life and times of Gavrilo Princip, the Serbian student who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, and which was the catalyst for World War One.This concise, accessible, compelling book is part history, part travelogue, and part memoir, which explains the history of the Balkans and why, despite his momentous action, Princip is now ...

"The driver's decision to turn into Franz Joseph Street and not continue down the Appel Quay, as had been decided back at the town hall, was a stroke of assassin's luck for [Gavrilo] Princip. When General Potiorek spotted what was happening he shouted at the driver, ordering him immediately to stop and reverse back out onto the Appel Quay. Instead of his target speeding past, Princip saw the Archduke [Franz Ferdinand] slow right in front of him only a few feet away - the gallant count, so willin...

An excellent multi layered history/travelogue/personal story tracing the journey of Gavrilo Princip from remote Bosnian village to initiator of World War 1.Tim Butcher brings alive the story of Gavrilo Princip by physically following the young Bosnian Serb's journey from his remote village to the streets of Sarajevo. The author paints a fascinating story as he visits the remote hamlet where Princip grew up to discover still living descendants, takes on epic treks through the now land mine infest...