Michael Walsh, historian, and journalist, never found the time to be a novelist until recently, a term that is flexible. It was during the 1990s when, down to his last brass cent, he wondered if salvation might come via a blockbuster novel. The dissident journalist put pen to paper and began work on Retribution later re-titled A Leopard in Liverpool.
He knew the plot had to tick all the boxes and most important the storyline had to be believable. The only one way to achieve this was to write a novel that draws on first-hand real-life experience. In many respects, A Leopard in Liverpool is painfully biographical. The reader will feel the skin prickles as he or she turns the pages.
The novel is based on a mercenary’s planned vacation in his native Liverpool. His break goes downhill when during a chance meeting with a former girlfriend he learns that his adolescent daughter, whom he was unaware of, is ensnared by the maritime city’s lowlife. This was an epic fail on their part.
After being drawn into the 1960s Congo crisis and Simba Rebellion Liverpool seaman, Fraser McLeod morphed into a lethal humanoid. The leopard in the book’s title was the insignia of Commando Kansimba otherwise known as the Leopard Battalion under the command of the legendary Colonel Jean ‘Black Jack’ Schramme.
Years spent in Rhodesia’s anti-insurgency bush wars served to turn the dog-of-war into a cunning and resourceful predator. Camouflaged by the inner-city mixed-race nomadic jetsam his pubescent daughter’s trail has by now gone cold. The action heats up when the merciless MacLeod melts into the maritime city’s social sewers.
Those, whose trade is debt and death, flesh and illegal substances know how to discourage the inquisitive. Yet, they are no match for a prowling marauder for whom death is no more to be feared than is birth. The soldier-of-fortune turned arms dealer has a single lead and unquenchable thirst for a vengeful nemesis.
Readers of A Leopard in Liverpool will be much reminded of the Brian Garfield novel, Death Wish. The movie of the same title tells the story of Paul Kersey, a Manhattan architect, who became famous, or infamous for pedestrian vigilantism.
Parallels will also be drawn on the 1978 soldier of fortune Daniel Carney epic, The Wild Geese. When the film was made it became an iconic movie that allows us a peek into the world of the notorious dogs-of-war.
A Leopard in Liverpool makes Death Wish and The Wild Geese into a hot trilogy of drama, suspense, and brutal pedestrian vigilantism. Was Michael the man for the job? You decide but rest assured that much of the book is indeed biographical. A Leopard in Liverpool skilfully combines real life with, well, you decide, is this saga all real life or not.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin again appears to warn Israel that, unlike the U.S. and EU, Russia does not consider the interests of Israel to be untouchable. Having already berated Talmudic Jews for their malevolent seizure of power in 1917, the president’s instruction was to restore the memorial that marks the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, uncle of Tsar Nicholas II.
The original monument was paid for by public donations and erected in 1905 with great solemnity and later destroyed by vengeful Bolsheviks in 1918. The symbolism of the president’s instruction will not be lost on globalists.
The massive cross was the creation of the legendary artist Victor Vasnetsov and stood in its place for only 10 years. Its demolition was caused by Vladimir Lenin, Sverdlov and a group of other Bolsheviks tossing a looped rope over the head of the Christ figure and dragging it to the ground.
The assassinated Grand Duke, the brother of Russian Emperor Alexander III, was staunchly anti-Jewish and cleared the Jewish merchants from the temples of Russian commerce following is the appointment.
February 18 marks a tragic event that Russians consider very important. Indeed, when the terrorist attack occurred the world was in shock and ever since Russians remember the appalling assassination carried out by Jewish insurgents.
In February 1891, Emperor Alexander III appointed Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (1857-1905) Moscow Governor-General. His brother was a political hardliner who shared his brother’s belief in strong, ethnic Russian nationalist government.
With immediate effect 20,000 – 30,000 Jews were evicted, about 3/4 of the entire Jewish population of Moscow. From there on Jews were not allowed to join the Moscow merchant class of the 1st guild until their share decreased to 33% among representatives of this category of inhabitants of the capital.
Eager for revenge the militant Jewish controlled S.R. (Socialist Revolutionary Party) sentenced Grand Prince Sergei Alexandrovich to death. The Bolsheviks then waited for a convenient chance to carry out the death sentence.
The Grand Duke’s wife, Elizaveta Fyodorovna knew her husband’s life was in danger having received unsigned letters with warnings not to accompany her husband unless she wanted to share his fate. Disregarding the threats, the Grand Duchess constantly escorted her husband.
Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich; Sergei’s wife, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna holding Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna; Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich with his son, Dmitri, on his lap.
On February 15, 1905, the family attended a concert at the Bolshoi Theatre in aid of Elizabeth Feodorovna’s Red Cross War charities. Aware of the processional route to be taken the Bolsheviks planned the assassination of the Grand Duke. But, seeing the childless couple’s niece and nephew in the carriage one of the assassins thought better of it. He decided not to wave the handkerchief which he had agreed to use as a signal to one of the comrades ready to throw the bomb.
The aim was to assassinate the Grand Duke, not to kill his wife and two innocent children in cold blood, which would surely send a wave of revulsion through the empire and set back the revolutionary cause by years.
Nonetheless, Ivan Kalyayev, of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party’s Combat detachment, three days later, stepped forward and hurled a nitro-glycerine bomb directly into the lap of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. The detonation disintegrated the carriage and the Grand Duke was killed immediately, his body shredded.
The corpse of the Grand Duke was mutilated, with the head, the upper part of the chest and the left shoulder and arm being destroyed whilst very little remained of the victim’s face. Some of the Grand Duke’s fingers, still adorned with the rings he habitually wore, were found on the roof of a nearby building and were recovered sometime later.
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Kalyayev, who by his own testimony had expected to die in the explosion, survived. Sucked into the vortex of the explosion, he ended up by the remains of the rear wheels. His face peppered by splinters, pouring with blood. He was immediately arrested, sentenced to death and hanged two months later.
Ivan Kalyayev (July 6, 1877 – May 23, 1905) was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. He is best known for his role in the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, which was an operation of the SR Combat Organization. Arrested at the scene, Kalyayev was convicted of murder and hanged.
Photograph of Ivan Kalyayev taken after the assassination of the Duke. “I threw the bomb from less than four steps. I was taken by the explosions; I saw the carriage fly to pieces. My overcoat was strewn with splinters of wood all around, it was torn and burnt, and there was blood on my face.”
When Elizaveta Fyodorovna arrived at the scene of the explosion a crowd of people had already gathered. One of the onlookers attempted to prevent her from coming close to her husband’s remains. Unwilling to be thwarted, with her own hands she picked up the parts of his body torn asunder by the explosion and put them onto the stretchers.
On the third day following her husband’s death, Elizaveta Fyodorovna visited the jailed assassin. Kalyayev said, “I did not want to kill you, I saw him several times when I had the bomb ready, but you were beside him and I did not dare the attempt.”
“Did it not occur to you that you killed us both,” she replied.
She then said she had brought Sergei Alexandrovich’s forgiveness and asked the murderer to repent.
The Grand Duchess ordered a monument to be designed by the Russian artist Victor Vasnetsov, which was built and placed at the site of her husband’s assassination. Here then was a cross on which the words of the Saviour pronounced by Him on the cross were written, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” (Luke 23:34) (6).
From the time of her husband’s assassination, Elizaveta Fyodorovna wore mourning dresses; she kept a strict fast and prayed much. Her bedroom in the Nicolievski Palace began to resemble a nun’s cell.
All the splendid furniture was removed; the walls were painted white and covered only with icons and pictures of evangelic content. She never appeared at any receptions or balls. She went to church only at weddings or baptism of relatives and friends and left for home or on her business immediately after the ceremony. Nothing bound her to the high society life.
Elizaveta Fyodorovna took her jewelry and gave much of it to the state treasury, leaving some to her relatives. With such as remained she decided to use for the building of a monastery of Mercy.
The Grand Duchess bought a large estate with four houses and a garden on Ordynka Street in Moscow. The largest two-story building housed the dining room, the kitchen, storage and other rooms for nuns. The second house became a church and a hospital, with a drugstore and a clinic for visiting patients beside it, and the fourth building was set up as a house for the Priest-Confessor, the library, and classes for orphan girls.
During World War I Elizaveta Feodorovna organised sanitary trains, arranged a hospital for the wounded in Moscow, where she often visited, organised special committees to provide widows and orphans of those killed at the front. It was especially touching for a soldier to receive icons and images from the Grand Duchess, prayer books, and the Gospels. She was especially concerned about distributing icons and literature and artefacts through Orthodox churches with everything necessary for worship.
The Jewish Bolsheviks were unrelenting in their hatred for Europe’s most popular dynastic family members. Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, widow of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, sister of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, 54 years old, in July 1918 she was arrested and ultimately executed by the Bolsheviks near city Alapayevsk. She met a brutal death when still alive: the diminutive saintly sister of mercy was hurled down a forest mineshaft.
It was the last waltz for Europe and the last dance for humanity. Had one of Europe’s oldest, most successful and popular royal houses not been destroyed and consumed by New York-based banking houses the world would likely have been a far better place today.
Instead, in 1917, American-Jewish banker Jacob Schiff backed by U.S. and European governments, in alliance with scores of supra-corporations, financed insurgents like Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Jacob Sverdlov, who by violence toppled the legitimate government and royal dynasty of the world’s largest country.
The same globalists tried to seize war-ravaged Germany in 1918 – 1920 but were beaten off. The Russian Revolution was no more a revolution that was the later seizure and toppling of nations like Syria, Libya, and Iraq by the same messianic globalist tribe.
As consequence, the world’s largest gold reserves and mineral and material wealth harnessed to the millions assigned to the Gulag slave camps fell into the hands of Bolsheviks (U.S based globalists).
Imperial Germany, the British Empire, Europe’s African colonies would soon see their wealth seized and controlled by a small cabal of corporate banking dynasties based largely in the United States.
Those who attended Europe’s last great ball could never in their worst nightmare foresee their fate and that of the rest of the world. The entire Imperial Russian house, a European dynasty was about to be slaughtered or exiled and 70 millions of Russia’s 186 million Christian population martyred. The hangover from globalism would plunge the world into a century that, according toR. J. Rummel, Power, Genocide and Mass Murder, Journal of Peace Research, would result in the slaughter of 170 million people.
On February 11 – 13, 1903 the Winter Palace in St Petersburg hosted the grand costume ball. It was the last ball of Imperial Russia. This grand ball, known as The Ball of 1903 was thought to be the grandest in the reign of the 290-year old Romanov dynasty.
Advances in photography had made it possible to record to the finest detail folk costumes, clothes, hats, gloves, and shoes. By such means, we are able to identify individual items and sets belonging to participants of masquerade.
The last emperor of Russia Nicolas II (pictured) was robed in the golden brocade of 17th-century Russian tsar Alexey Mikhailovich. The Empress Alexandra Fedorovna appeared in the raiments of the first wife of Alexey Mikhailovich, Empress Maria Ilinichna – a brocade dress decorated with silver satin and pearls topped by a diamond and emerald-studded crown. Empress Alexandra Fedorovna wore a huge emerald. All the jewellery was chosen by court jeweller Carl Faberge. Today such a dress would cost approximately 10 million euros.
By order of Empress Alexandra Fedorovna the best photographers of St. Petersburg, Boasson and Egler, Alexander Renz and Schroeder, Levitsky, V. Yasvoin, D. Zdobnov and others, performed single portraits and group shots of participants of the ball.
These photographs were the basis for the publication of the album containing about two hundred images. The world-class photograph albums were later distributed to raise considerable amounts of money for many charities. In this way, great wealth raised by the ball cascaded across the needy rather than being kept to the royal houses as was the protocol in other European royal houses.
The souvenir album.
Dinner was served in the appropriately furnished Spanish, Italian and Flemish halls of the Hermitage. After the dinner, their Majesties with the participants of the ball headed for the Pavilion Hall, where the evening ended with dancing.
Members of the royal family gathered in the Malachite Room and the rest in the surrounding areas. At eleven o’clock in the evening, all the participants of the last great ball of Europe started to dance in the Concert Hall, where on the gold-plated bars of the podium there was a court orchestra of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, in trumpeters’ costumes. Buffets were located in the Concert Hall and the Small dining tables with tea and wine in the Malachite Room.
After dinner, guests and the hosts returned to the Concert Hall and danced till morning, waltzes, quadrilles, and mazurkas, Russian dances. Cavaliers were young officers; ladies were in sundresses and kokoshniks, men in suits of archers, falconers, and others.
The memories of that last ball in 1903 did not die during the Soviet era. A special edition “Russian Style” pack of cards was produced in 1913, honoring the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov. “Russian Style” playing cards were reprinted even after the Russian Empire collapsed, and became the most popular pack of cards in the USSR. Millions of Soviet people were unaware that they were holding the memory of the last Romanov fancy-dress ball in their hands.
The jack of clubs was copied from Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich’s apparel, and the jack of diamonds came from Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich. The queen of clubs was largely borrowed from the dress of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fedorovna, and the queen of hearts resembles the tsar’s sister, Ksenia Alexandrovna, dressed as a boyar’s wife.
Curiously, Star Wars costume artist Trisha Biggar was inspired by the Russian-style dresses of female boyars with kokoshniks when designing the gold travel costume of Queen Amidala.
All the visitors were in bejeweled 17th-century style costumes, made from designs by the artist Sergey Solomko, in collaboration with historical experts.
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch recalled the occasion as “the last spectacular ball in the history of the empire … [but] a new and hostile Russia glared through the large windows of the palace … while we danced, the workers were striking and the clouds in the Far East were hanging dangerously low.”
The entire Imperial family, the Tsar as Alexei I, the Tsaritsa as Maria Miloslavskaya, all dressed in rich 17th-century attire, posed in the Hermitage’s theatre, many wearing priceless original items brought specially from the Kremlin, for what was to be their final photograph together.
All 390 guests were requested to come in traditional Russian 17th-century dress. This grand event was remarkable for its luxurious Russian-style costumes. Court ladies were attired in sundresses embroidered with precious stones and kokoshniks (head-dresses) adorned with the finest family jewels, while gentlemen boasted richly decorated caftans and boyar-style fur hats. / Grand Duke Andrey Vladimirovich.
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THE 1903 BALL AT THE WINTER PALACE: THE LAST GRAND BALL IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA. A GREAT CHORUS OF PRAISE (“LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN IN THE SKY, GLORY!”) FROM OPERA BORIS GODUNOVBY MODEST MUSSORGSKY
MICHAEL WALSH QUALITY BOOKS 