Background
Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian-born writer and playwright who left communist Bulgaria in 1969 and settled in the United Kingdom. In London he worked for the BBC World Service and prepared broadcasts for Radio Free Europe. His programmes criticised the Bulgarian government and found a large audience in Bulgaria.
He became an uncomfortable voice for the regime, and such dissident broadcasts were part of the tension between the two blocs during the Cold War.
Markov was born in Sofia and trained as a chemical engineer before turning to literature. His novels and plays were first successful in Bulgaria and then met censorship. He continued to write abroad and became known for his essays and broadcasts.
What happened
On 7 September 1978, the birthday of Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov, Markov was waiting for a bus near Waterloo Bridge in London when he felt a sudden pain in his leg. A man behind him picked up an umbrella from the ground, apologised and left in a taxi.
Markov felt unwell by the time he reached his workplace and developed a fever. He was taken to hospital and died four days later, on 11 September 1978.
Few people at the scene noticed the moment, and many would have taken the umbrella for an accident. Doctors at the hospital could not at first determine the cause of his illness; examinations after his death revealed how serious the situation had been.
Investigation
A post-mortem examination, assisted by experts from Britain's Porton Down laboratory, found a platinum-iridium pellet smaller than a pinhead in his leg. It had contained roughly 0.2 milligrams of ricin. In January 1979 an inquest ruled that he had died of ricin poisoning. Another Bulgarian dissident, Vladimir Kostov, was attacked in a similar way in Paris that year; a comparable pellet was found in his back, and he survived.
It is widely assumed that the Bulgarian state security service was responsible, with help from the KGB. British police took the case up again in 2008 and questioned some people. Bulgaria closed its own investigation in 2013 because the statute of limitations had expired.
Where it stands today
No one has ever been arrested or charged. The case remains one of the best-known political assassinations of the Cold War and an unanswered question for Markov's family and friends. This page remembers a writer who lost his life for speaking his mind.
After the end of the Cold War some archives in Bulgaria were opened, but a significant part of the documents relating to the case was reported lost or destroyed.