April 4, 2024 • 52 mins
We’re back at the Vrana Palace in Sofia, Bulgaria, where King Simeon II and Princess Maria Luisa tell host Becky Milligan about their narrow escape from targeted Allied bombings after their father’s death. As more secrets emerge from the pages of a British diplomat’s private diary, Becky is forced to consider an ugly possibility. But as she follows the trail of poison, a brand new suspect slithers into the frame.
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Speaker 1 (02:13):
Goodbye Up Starboard.
Speaker 8 (02:21):
Nighttime March twenty fourth, nineteen forty four, and a British
Royal Air Force pilot circles his Wellington bomber over sleeping
Sofia tonight. He's been chosen to hit a very special target.
He's waiting for.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
His queue steady.
Speaker 8 (02:43):
The pilot jabs the rudder hard right and the wing
bucks upwards. He's not alone in the pitch dark sky.
It's crowded up here. Forty other British bombers swoop over
the Bulgarian capital and in this thick cloud concentrations.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Everything I see that keep on cough.
Speaker 8 (03:05):
Sofia is under attack again. In his drafty cockpit, the
pilot is blinded by flashes of exploding bombs hitting their targets,
strings of bombs rained down on the city. They're hitting industrial,
government and residential areas. But this pilot hasn't opened his
(03:28):
bomb doors. His shells have an altogether different destination. He's
not there yet, just a couple more miles. All through
the winter and now into the spring, hundreds of British
and American bomber planes have attacked Bulgaria from the air,
(03:50):
the cities in ruins. Bulgaria has no soldiers in active combat,
but she's signed a symbolic declaration of war on Britain
and America, and in the eyes of the Allies, she
deserves this beating.
Speaker 9 (04:05):
Yet below, clown.
Speaker 8 (04:07):
The Wellington's bombay is crammed with heavy blockbuster and incendiary
bombs just waiting to be dropped, but the pilot's navigator
directs him southeast away from the city, away from the
other bombers. They're very close. Now it's time. The pilot
(04:29):
closes the throttle and the plane begins to dive, because
tonight there's a new target, a very deliberate target, Vana Palace,
home to the Bulgarian royal family.
Speaker 10 (04:47):
Here we go on yours open.
Speaker 8 (04:49):
And in the palace, cowering in a bunker are Queen
Giovanna and her children, eleven year old Maria Louisa and
the boy King's Simeon. They're absolutely petrified. Their father, King Boris,
has been dead for nearly seven months. A suspected victim
of murder. He signed a pat with Hitler and now
(05:14):
his family is paying the price and buns away the
furious formation of Wellington's Pumel Varanha from the sky.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Again and again.
Speaker 8 (05:28):
This is a made to measure revenge raid and it's
been personally ordered by one man who just cannot forgive
Boris's treachery. Sir Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, has
(05:49):
no mercy for the young royals. Did he also sign
the order to kill their father.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
From Blanchard's House?
Speaker 8 (06:03):
And exactly right, Media, this is the Butterfly King. I'm
Becky Milligan, Chapter four. A Snake is still a snake.
(06:59):
I'm back in Bulgaria in the grounds of Vrana Palace
with my producer e J to pay another visit to
King Simeon and his sister, Princess Maria Louisa. And as usual,
our taxes dumped us miles away from the palace door,
long old walk.
Speaker 11 (07:18):
I know, but there's no way in.
Speaker 8 (07:20):
There're just gates everywhere and guards who won't let us in.
Speaker 12 (07:25):
It was nice when he realized we were coming for
the king. I think he thought we were a bit,
you know, sort of groupiees. I mean, if you banged
on a gate like that, at Buckingham Palace.
Speaker 11 (07:35):
I know, yes, I liked your foreign lord.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
It's very good, Bulgarian.
Speaker 13 (07:41):
I think.
Speaker 8 (07:43):
You'll remember that Varana Palace was King Boris's go to place,
his countryside getaway. He felt safe here, catching his butterflies
and playing with his children.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Now you know what Varana means, don't you? No crow?
Speaker 11 (07:58):
Really?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And you know what the collective noun for a group
of croses.
Speaker 11 (08:03):
A murder of crows? How fitting is that?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Of course?
Speaker 8 (08:09):
The official reason for Boris's death is that he died
of a heart attack, but as we've established, his strange
symptoms suggest he was poisoned. That's what his daughter, Maria
Louisa has believed all these years.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
She was just ten when her father died.
Speaker 8 (08:25):
She's now eighty nine, and we're actually visiting her on
a rather special occasion, the Princess's birthday, and we have
brought a couple of We got a rather nice little
present for her biscuits.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, everybody likes a biscuit.
Speaker 8 (08:41):
It's not a dad, but yes, Maria Louisa is turning ninety.
Speaker 11 (08:47):
I am a bit worried about the flavors.
Speaker 12 (08:49):
Rose and violet roses a little bit calls to Newcastle.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Actually because Bulgaria is famous for roses. I did think
about that afterwards.
Speaker 11 (08:57):
Do you like violet flavored biscuits?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I don't think I've ever had one.
Speaker 11 (09:02):
Actually, quite disgusting.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
They really hope she doesn't offer us one. Well, I'm
not going to have one.
Speaker 8 (09:09):
Maria Louisa has flown into Sofia from New York to
celebrate with her brother, King Simeon.
Speaker 12 (09:14):
She must be jet bag because I actually got here
yesterday all the day before.
Speaker 11 (09:18):
I don't know if you have jet leg when you're older.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
It's worn out all the time, aren't you. We're worn
out all the time.
Speaker 8 (09:29):
The thing is, we're both feeling a bit nervy because
today we have to broach a rather tricky subject, the
possibility that Winston Churchill and Britain may have been responsible
for their father's death. So I'm slightly fearful about the
kind of welcome we're going to get.
Speaker 12 (09:49):
Look, here comes a big, posh looking car Loo. Yes,
then come to get us talking of distrust. That looks
like an sort of armorplated car, doesn't it.
Speaker 11 (09:59):
Oh my god, it's just stopping.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
It might be the king. It is the palaces.
Speaker 11 (10:03):
This way, which way up here?
Speaker 8 (10:06):
Oh my god, we're going to hear the accelerator though,
I don't want us to do the story anymore.
Speaker 11 (10:13):
Don't look, Oh, don't hear me else following us. Oh
my god, I'm quite shore. We walk past quickly.
Speaker 8 (10:20):
The thing is, we now think we know how Boris
was killed. We found evidence in two sources, the London
Archives and the diary of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebels.
They both tell us it was an Asiatic or Indian
poison which did for the king, probably snake poison. And
(10:41):
guess who has ready access to Asia. During the war
in nineteen forty three, Britain was an imperial power with
colonies across South and Southeast Asia. The British and their
Commonwealth allies were fighting a savage war against the Japanese
(11:02):
in the jungles of Indonesia and Malaysia. Conditions for the
troops were pretty terrible. For every soldier wounded in battle,
another one hundred and twenty fell sick due to tropical illnesses.
They were bitten by mosquitoes, bugs, and of course snakes.
(11:23):
In fact, before they went to bed at night, soldiers
were worn to check their beds to make sure they
didn't get any nasty surprises. But it wasn't just those
snakes that concerned the British. This Royal Air Force film
(11:44):
from nineteen forty one clearly identifies another treacherous snake, at
least in the eyes of the Brits, a snake hiding
in the Royal Palace in Sofia.
Speaker 14 (11:56):
King Boris Bulgaria lies between Greece and Romania.
Speaker 8 (12:00):
Remember, Bulgaria had started the war insisting on her neutrality.
King Boris wanted to stay out of it all, but
he broke his word.
Speaker 14 (12:11):
King Barris agreed to keep out of the war if
we respected Bulgaria's utility. We kept our promise, but already
Barris was flooding with Hitler.
Speaker 8 (12:21):
And when Boris signed that pat with Hitler, Churchill was livid.
To Churchill, honor was everything, and his anger went deep.
The previous winter, Britain had signed the largest surrender in
British history when Singapore fell to Japan. It was a
humiliating defeat for the Empire, a loss of face that
(12:44):
Churchill found very hard to swallow. The Allies were losing
thousands of men every week, yet Boris had managed to
avoid sending a single Bulgarian soldier to the front was
engaged in active combat. Historian Tessa Dunlop reckons Churchill despised
(13:06):
Boris for that.
Speaker 13 (13:07):
What's interesting is, unlike, for example, the Romanians, who are
holess Bolus in bed with the Germans, Boris walks this
enigmatic line and I think that's almost infuriating, Like you
can hate the Romanians, but by God, they got their
come up and in Russia they were murdered like flies,
you know. Whereas Bulgaria, it seems like they've had a
(13:31):
pretty easy ride of the war. To be honest with you,
a little bit of light occupation.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
And let's not forget that symbolic declaration of war that
Bulgaria made on Britain and America.
Speaker 13 (13:42):
How can you symbolically be at war with someone talk
about wanting to have it both ways?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Well, if you're Churchill, what.
Speaker 13 (13:48):
Are you going to make of that? You know you're
not going to think, oh, Boris is my new best friend.
Speaker 8 (13:52):
And what's more, Boris has done it all in the
shadows by playing the system.
Speaker 13 (13:57):
He's managed to get his and that probably sticks in
the crawl, don't you think of Churchill. I mean this
man at Churchill stakes his identity on taking the fight
to the enemy on the lending stages, even though he's
never going to bloody have to.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Do and all that kind of jazz.
Speaker 13 (14:13):
And Boris does the exact opposite, which is head down
work as many people as you can, play them off
against each other, don't play your hand until you absolutely
have to.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And he's done it really rather well.
Speaker 8 (14:24):
That's infuriating, even more so because Britain had been double
crossed by Boris's family, the Saxe Coburgs before, and.
Speaker 14 (14:34):
Barris soon followed his minister being met at the station
by the fire himself. And like his father in the
last war, he betrays his people.
Speaker 8 (14:44):
Like his father, Boris' dad, Foxy Ferdinand, had been courted
by the British and French in World War One. They
hoped he'd be their ally, but Foxy was also secretly
being wooed by the Germans, and in the end he
decided he'd be better off with them and for Churchill
(15:05):
than Boris. This is where it all gets personal. Both
men had fought in the First World War on opposite sides.
Of course, Boris with the Triple Alliance that's Germany, Austria,
Hungary and Italy, and Churchill with the Triple Entente that's Britain,
France and Russia. And Churchill still held that grudge. He
(15:27):
just couldn't let it go.
Speaker 13 (15:29):
They think Boris is more Saxe Coburg treachery. Don't forget
Boris is the son of Ferdinand berdanand the only king
in the Balkans to not fight alongside the Entente in
the First World War.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
Did Churchill expect Boris to pay for the sins of
his father? Boris's decision to ally with Hitler sent shockways
through the British establishment, and that broken promise left more
than one British diplomat feeling like a fool. Diplomats like
(16:04):
Lord George Lloyd. And how do I know because on
one of my trips to the archives I came across
his private papers.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
So we get the real.
Speaker 8 (16:15):
Sort of gossipy side of this. You know, you just
don't forget all this. He was feeding that to London. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean that's what his job was, wasn't it. I
expect they all sort of and they heard something interesting.
They're on the blower, as they would say. Then yeah,
on the blower. So intriguing, isn't it to have access
now to you know all of that correspondence and his thoughts,
(16:39):
and you know all those little bitchy comments.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
It's interesting.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
Lord Lloyd was the chairman of the British Council. It's
the sort of cultural arm of the Foreign Office, designed
to create good relations overseas. In the winter of nineteen
thirty nine he was sent on a tour of the
Balkans to try and shore up support for the war.
Now Lord Lloyd was no fool. He was also a spy,
(17:08):
and his personal letters show he had a waspish tongue.
Speaker 10 (17:13):
I dined that night with Colonel Ross, our military attache,
a dinner that would have been pleasant had it not
been for the volubility of Monsieur Chezon, the League of
Nations representative, who may conceivably be interesting on politics, but
who on military affairs is as ignorant as he is asserted.
The remaining guests were not of great interest. My impression
of him was that he was a rather tiresome windbag.
(17:34):
The next day, at seven point thirty, we left for Sofia,
only to be told the ferry would not leave for
some three quarters of an hour, so we went into
a cottage on the key, drank some coffee with bad brandy,
and came to an overheated and reasonably unspeakable restaurant to
have breakfast.
Speaker 8 (17:49):
Lord Lloyd first met King Boris in nineteen thirty nine.
That was long before Boris teamed up with Hitler and Well.
Lloyd was charmed by him, particularly by the King's affection
for his royal British cousins, the Windsors.
Speaker 10 (18:05):
King Boris alluded to the invariable happiness of his visits
to England. He had especially enjoyed his visits to Bellmarle.
He showed me a small photograph of his late Majesty,
King George the Fifth, which he always kept on his
writing table in.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Front of him.
Speaker 8 (18:17):
He was so impressed that after his visit he even
wrote to King Boris.
Speaker 10 (18:22):
I have, since my audience with your Majesty, done my
best to convince everyone I meet of the strength and
sincerity of Bulgaria's neutrality.
Speaker 8 (18:31):
But a week or so later, Lord Lloyd popped over
the border to Yugoslavia, where he met their ruler, Prince Paul.
He told the Prince about his wonderful audience with the
trustworthy King Boris, the Prince gave him a very different view.
Speaker 10 (18:47):
Prince Paul laughed, merely replied that I was yet another
simple and guileless victim of King Boris's well known tactics.
Speaker 8 (18:54):
Prince Paul basically told Lord Lloyd he'd been had, and
that picture of King George the Fifth that Boris had
on his writing table, he.
Speaker 10 (19:02):
Said, as for the photograph, he kept many of them
of different kings and rulers and pulled out the proper
one for each listener.
Speaker 8 (19:10):
Crafty, Now, don't forget all this was being fed back
to the government, to Churchill, and while Lord Lloyd might
have been charming to the King privately, he became deeply
suspicious of him.
Speaker 10 (19:26):
I'm under no illusions as to the treachery and perfidy
of King Boris.
Speaker 8 (19:30):
And when Bulgaria signed a pact with Hitler, tempers boiled
over One of the papers I found in the archives
has an angry comment scrawled into the margin.
Speaker 10 (19:41):
Bulgaria will live to regret her decision.
Speaker 8 (19:46):
Is that a veiled threat from the British. Was Lord
Lloyd preparing the way for his spy network to assassinate Boris?
I mean I don't really need to spell out what
secret services get up to.
Speaker 15 (19:59):
Secret service, you know, there's a bit of a hint
on the name of the tid. They do operations in
secret which others cannot do.
Speaker 8 (20:08):
That's Colonel Hamish de Bretton Gordon, our weapons expert, remember
hiss ex military, and let's just say he's not unfamiliar
with covert operations.
Speaker 15 (20:19):
In wartime in the defense of the homeland. They're prepared
to do whatever it takes, he.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
Says, bumping off Boris doesn't sound like the sort of
thing British intelligence would do.
Speaker 15 (20:30):
Today, but I would never completely rule out that perhaps
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Speaker 8 (23:53):
Oh okay, oh my god, Oh Nobby. At Verna Palace,
we're under thread when someone sets the dogs on us.
Speaker 12 (24:09):
All the King's dogs are cool booby, or at least
borises were just cool booby.
Speaker 10 (24:12):
Look it's working.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Luckily.
Speaker 8 (24:15):
Ej subdues the royal guard dogs with her special doggie voice.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
You're a rubbish guard dog.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Get money?
Speaker 11 (24:26):
How nice to see you again.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Lovely to see you.
Speaker 11 (24:29):
Should we go straight here?
Speaker 18 (24:30):
Yes?
Speaker 19 (24:31):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Perfect?
Speaker 8 (24:33):
Then Yavor, the King's suave and charming aid, comes to
our aid. But on our way into the palace there's
a difficult moment. Yavo casually points out the underground bunker
the royal family had built to protect themselves from Allied bombing.
Speaker 20 (24:50):
So after the start of the Second World War, they
decide to build a modern bunker. It's right here and this, yes,
this is the entrance. These bunkers say the old family
when this tower collapsed. It did collapse during the night.
King Simeon go out with the family.
Speaker 11 (25:07):
And then over under head.
Speaker 20 (25:08):
Yes they see the burning of the house because the
planes came from there, put the bombs here and continue.
But it was the few meters of the palace.
Speaker 8 (25:20):
And just when I'm thinking this visit can't get any
more awkward, Javo drops his own bombshell. His friend Sylvia,
a Bulgarian historian, has apparently found some damning evidence about
who murdered King Boris.
Speaker 21 (25:37):
When they were in UK. They found a document that
showed that the British wants to give weapons to someone
to assassin king bodies in Bulgaria.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
This is what the British. So it's the British.
Speaker 21 (25:57):
Yes, this is what she found.
Speaker 8 (25:58):
I think so yeah, falls claiming that a Bulgarian historian
has proof the British wanted King Boris dead and that
they were trying to arm someone to do the job
for them. I can hear Princess Maria Luisa and his
Majesty King Simeon coming down the corridor. We quickly try
and get the details from Yavel. The historian Sylvia has
(26:22):
found it in the UK. Yes, I think though, that's
what we need.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
We do need to speak to.
Speaker 21 (26:28):
Her really, yes, yes, yes, yeah, I will send them
a second message now to see issue.
Speaker 19 (26:33):
Answer me.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
A wonderfully.
Speaker 11 (26:47):
How are you doing with the jet lag?
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Is it you have to ignore the jet lag?
Speaker 19 (26:53):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Very good? Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 8 (26:56):
Perhaps our birthday biscuits might soften the mood. Her birthday
falls on an unfortunate day.
Speaker 19 (27:03):
Friday the thirteenth. Oh no, and it was Friday the
thirteenth when I was born. Oh my sorry, it doesn't
work for me, the bad luck and all that rubbish.
Speaker 11 (27:11):
Oh yes, throw that out the window.
Speaker 8 (27:14):
Anyway, this is for you from us, just because we
wanted to market and.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Oh my goodness, Heaven's sake, what is it.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
You can have a little We hope that this booze.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
It's not booze.
Speaker 8 (27:27):
No, oh god, we did think of booze, but then
we thought maybe it's biscuits.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I told DJ we should have got booze. Great, delighted, But.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
Then we have to get down to business and the
thorny subject of who killed Maria, Louisa and Simeon's father.
I hold off mentioning what Yavos just told us about
that document his friend found accusing the Brits of murder,
because I first want to explore whether the British the motive.
(28:02):
The Allied air raids began in April nineteen forty one
when Boris joined sides with Hitler, and they picked up
again in December of that year in response to the
King's symbolic declaration of war. The British Prime Minister had
persuaded President Roosevelt that Bulgaria needed a sharp lesson. But
(28:26):
what's strange is the raids intensified after the King's death
in nineteen forty four.
Speaker 19 (28:37):
There were huge air raids over Sophia many, many times,
and many days, Sofia almost burned.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
It was ghastly times and it was absolutely terrible.
Speaker 19 (28:50):
We were covered bombs several times, absolutely horrible. And five
minutes after the old clear my mother would drive in
and visit peace people in the hospitals, and you know,
there was no water, no electricity.
Speaker 8 (29:05):
And then as we've heard, the raids became personal, directly
targeting for Anna Palace where the boy King Simeon was
hiding in that underground bunker with a little flashlight. He
still doesn't like talking about it. He once wrote that
he was sure they were all going to die. His
(29:25):
sister remembers watching her home go up in smoke.
Speaker 19 (29:30):
Sure, burn, do you remember seeing the flames? Sure, incendiary
bombs on the roof. The roof was burning in the roof,
of course, wounded people. Other people panicked and were screaming.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
And it didn't end there.
Speaker 19 (29:49):
Huge bomb fell in the garden and one of these
enormous bombs made a huge crater. And our chief gardener
decided were much too complicated to fill the hole, so
put the little pond. And we used to call it
Churchill's lake, But it's no longer there, No, But.
Speaker 8 (30:10):
It was over there, how terrifying, just missing by an inch.
So was Churchill just trying to frighten Bulgaria into changing
sides once Boris was dead? Or was he determined to
wipe out the entire royal family, a family he felt
was rotten to the core.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Why did he do it? Do you think.
Speaker 19 (30:33):
That she has to ask him?
Speaker 8 (30:35):
Up there, Maria Louisa is pointing her finger upwards towards Heaven.
She's not smiling. So Churchill certainly had a motive for
killing King Boris. And remember what Yavill told us about
that document his friend Sylvia found it sounds like the
(30:56):
British were creating their own opportunity. But that's where we've
got another mystery on our hands because Yavo's friend, Sylvia
won't pick up our calls.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
But it so happens.
Speaker 8 (31:10):
We know another friend of hers, her colleague in fact,
the very distinguished historian George Bosdaganoff.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
You might remember him.
Speaker 8 (31:19):
He gets ever so slightly frustrated with me from time
to time.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So if you look at this.
Speaker 8 (31:27):
Right, I think that's nineteen forty three, and it's more
you want me to shut up, don't you.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (31:33):
Okay, yes, So I get my producer EJ. To call
him to ask him if he's familiar with Sylvia's discovery.
Speaker 22 (31:43):
I'm absolutely sure I haven't seen such a document that
British have an agreement for killing czar Boris. I'm hearing
about this document for the first time in my life
from you now just now.
Speaker 9 (32:00):
Yes, I found it rather surprising, and I thought if
anybody has found something like that, it would be the
great detective historian mister bosba gun Off himself.
Speaker 22 (32:14):
Thank you, I find such a document at all.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 22 (32:23):
You're a colleague money gun also.
Speaker 11 (32:26):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 8 (32:27):
I'm here and thank you.
Speaker 11 (32:28):
It was it was lovely to.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Speak to you.
Speaker 8 (32:33):
Okay, come, he's missing me already, at least his promised
to try to reach Sylvia for us.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Well.
Speaker 8 (32:44):
So, yeah, so he thinks it's a mistake, a.
Speaker 12 (32:49):
Mistake unless Sylvia's squirreled away a document without telling him.
Speaker 11 (32:53):
He's quite indignant, isn't he that?
Speaker 8 (32:56):
You know, if it's true there's a document, he will
be really cross. Well, let's see what he can find.
Back to nineteen forty one, Sofia and our list of
British motives for murdering Boris. Boris has allied with the
Nazis and the situation in the city is getting worse
(33:17):
at the British embassy staff are terrified, with.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Good reason under Nazi orders.
Speaker 8 (33:28):
The Bulgarian police start arresting British embassy staff. A British
official is kidnapped, the ambassador's butler disappears. And we know
this because in the archives I came across another set
of private papers that shed light on our investigation, the
papers of the British Ambassador to Bulgaria, Sir George Rendell,
(33:54):
the man at the heart of the action. He telegrams
London in fury.
Speaker 10 (34:01):
Methods adopted by Bulgarian authorities have been intolerable. Arrest of
the Bulgarian employees of the Press Office was entirely unjustifiable,
and removal of the legation Butler without notice was an
affront in which I cannot acquiesce with any dignity. We
must now write off King Boris as a dead loss.
Speaker 8 (34:19):
Rendall's twenty one year old daughter lives with him, and
he fears for her safety and for the safety of
his sixty embassy staff.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
He's right to.
Speaker 8 (34:35):
Under Rendall's direction, the British mission packs up and DeCamps
to Turkey. On the eleventh of March nineteen forty one,
the ambassador and his diplomatic party arrive at the pair
of Palace hotel in istanbul Hell.
Speaker 10 (34:52):
May I just have the keys to my room, please,
Sir George Rendall. I don't worry about her bags for now.
You can get the boy to bring him up.
Speaker 8 (34:58):
Bound by, Rendell and his daughter are given rooms on
an upper floor. That twist of fate saves both their lives,
because a few minutes after they check in, someone has
(35:19):
planted a bomb in their luggage. Six people are killed,
including two members of Rendell's staff, both young women. Several
other people are badly injured. Who could have planted the
(35:39):
explosives well. The train which had taken them from Sofia
to Istanbul was a private train, and it turns out
that this was the private train of King Boris, the
third of Bulgaria. So for the Brits there were only
two options. Guherrians had planted the bomb themselves or were
(36:03):
at the very least complicit. Either way, it wasn't a
good look. The hostility between Bulgaria and Britain had just
reached another level altogether. Rendel and the king had enjoyed
cordial relations over the years. They'd even bonded over their
(36:24):
butterfly collections, but in his end of mission statement, Rendel writes.
Speaker 10 (36:31):
As for the future of the country, it is dark. Indeed,
if Bulgaria meets with heavy punishment, she'll have nobody but
herself and her present rulers to blame.
Speaker 8 (36:43):
All the evidence points in the same direction. The British
had every reason to kill the king, but how did
they do it? Back to the jungle and that snake venom,
And keep in mind that the claim Boris was killed
with snake venom comes from the private diary of Joseph Goebel's,
(37:06):
head of Nazi propaganda. Not really what you'd call a
trustworthy source, but why would he lie in his own diary?
So we know British troops were fighting in the jungles
of Asia. We also know there's a huge population of
deadly snakes in those jungles, and that their venom can
(37:27):
be milked, freeze, dried, and then injected into someone. Our
favorite snake expert, mark O'Shea told us so. But remember
that King Boris took six days to die. If you're
injected with deadly snake venom, wouldn't you keel over immediately?
Speaker 23 (37:45):
Not like you see in the moves where somebody gets
bitten and if all over dead, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
In fact, it all depends where precisely the venom's injected.
Speaker 23 (37:55):
There are so many different ways of doing injections intramuscular, intravenous, subcutaneously,
interpertor neally. Well not that one, thank you very much.
And then obviously the venoms got to spread from there
a little emphatics through the tissues, through.
Speaker 8 (38:08):
The blood, so a person injected with snake venom could
take a while to die, especially if the venom isn't
too potent, and we know the poor king lingered on
his deathbed.
Speaker 23 (38:21):
The same species could have a considerable amount of variation
in venom. When you milk the venom, you don't know
what concentration of venom is there, because it all depends
when the snake last used it.
Speaker 8 (38:34):
Okay, it's clearly not a precise science, but what if
the freeze dried venom wasn't injected, but was slipped into
his food.
Speaker 23 (38:45):
The point with venom is that snake venoms are protein,
so therefore your saliva will start the process of digestion
and your gut will finish it. The venom's probably not
going to be around long enough to actually do anything, so.
Speaker 8 (39:01):
Boris couldn't have been killed by swallowing snake venom. Mark's
actually tried it by accident.
Speaker 23 (39:07):
That is, I've caught a lot of spitting cobras and
they spit their venom at your face, and some of
that venom has gone into my mouth hit the back
of my throat. It's quite acrid. Generally, I'll just have
a swig of water or coffee.
Speaker 8 (39:21):
To take the taste away, remind me never to accept
a dinner invitation at Marx. So let's just recap Boris's
symptoms for a minute. He had a fever, he was vomiting,
his skin was covered in blotches, his red blood cells exploded,
then he lost consciousness, his liver packed up, and finally
(39:42):
he had a fatal heart attack. Does snake venom cause
such a reaction?
Speaker 23 (39:48):
Well, there isn't one answer to that, for the simple
fact that snake venoms are complicated cocktails of different toxins.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
This next bits very technical.
Speaker 23 (40:00):
You've got neurotoxins which affect the nervous system, hemotoxins that
affect the circulatory system, cytotoxins.
Speaker 8 (40:08):
That to be honest, all this is going a bit
over my head. I'm still feeling a bit sick thinking
of Mark's swallowing snake venom.
Speaker 23 (40:17):
And then suddenly, then you've got cardiotoxins that directly target
the heart.
Speaker 8 (40:24):
Cardiotoxins, a snake venom which directly attacks the heart. Have
I finally found what killed Boris? But but why does
there always have to be a butt.
Speaker 23 (40:40):
If there's damage to the blood vessels, I would expect
there to be signs of that in the kidneys, and
I would expect the urine to contain blood urine as
black as coca cola, right, probably amount of it, and
(41:01):
that's not been mentioned.
Speaker 8 (41:03):
Well, no, he's a king, for goodness sake, I can't
exactly ask about a file of royal pa never mind,
But now he's reviewed the symptoms. Does Mark agree it
could have been snake venom that killed King Boris?
Speaker 23 (41:20):
I'm absolutely positive that it wasn't It sounds great, it
sounds so sensational and exciting, But no, oh.
Speaker 8 (41:27):
Come on, We've got deadly Asian snakes whose venom causes
heart attacks.
Speaker 11 (41:32):
What more do you want?
Speaker 23 (41:34):
People can survive snake bites sometimes without any anti venom.
It's estimated that up to fifty percent of bites might
not be fatal even without treatment.
Speaker 11 (41:45):
Well, he could have been one of the unlucky few.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I just don't go for that.
Speaker 23 (41:50):
If you really absolutely must bump somebody off, then don't
use snake venom. Use something that is guarantee to do
the job.
Speaker 8 (42:01):
But maybe better there's that sort of sense of you know,
the sort of fog of war and the mystery and
all the spies and let's do something a little bit,
you know different.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Why I can't say you can, I know you can't.
Speaker 23 (42:18):
I just don't say this as a as an efficient
means of getting rid of somebody nice, though it sounds
in a novel or something like that.
Speaker 8 (42:29):
Okay, I know when I'm beaten, looks like Gebels sent
me down a blind alley. So reluctantly I'm scratching out
snake venom as the means that killed the king. But
at least I've still got the British and Churchill in
the frame for the motive. All I have to do
now is pluck up the courage to confront Simeon and
(42:50):
Maria Louisa, to admit to them that I think my
own countrymen killed their father. But our interview doesn't go
the way I'd imagined at all.
Speaker 5 (43:02):
That's just nonsense.
Speaker 19 (43:04):
We were too small and unimportant for Britain to send
somebody and put poison in his soup.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
I don't believe it.
Speaker 8 (43:11):
It turns out the royal siblings have already researched Britain's
potential motives for killing the king, and they've crossed the
British off the list of suspects there's a very good
reason why. Turns out that by nineteen forty three, King
Boris was in secret talks with the Allies to try
to change sides.
Speaker 19 (43:32):
The British had no advantage of it because my father
already we were all trying desperately to ask for Western help.
Speaker 8 (43:46):
Yes, because Churchill was pretty vociferous about Bulgaria and your.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Father, Yeah, but not to the point of poisoning him.
Speaker 8 (43:56):
They know all about the Asian snake venom theory too,
and like me, they've dismissed it.
Speaker 5 (44:02):
This was one of the Nazi theories, part of the propaganda.
They said that it was a snake poison but it
was only found in British Guyhanna, So obviously trying to
point to the British intelligence for having done the job.
Speaker 11 (44:23):
But why would they have wanted to do that.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
We're on the wrong side in the war, so that
you could think that there's a reason that they should
eliminate the king.
Speaker 8 (44:34):
So the Nazi propaganda minister's diaries were just another piece
of propaganda. Turns out Goebels was counting on his diaries
being published. They were not his private thoughts at all.
And of course we're in the middle of the war,
where everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else and
(44:55):
passing the back. It seems only chasing red herrings here.
And remember Sylvia Yavel's friend who found that document blaming
the British. She'd discovered it in the British archives. Apparently, well,
even Bulgaria's leading historian, George bos Deganoff can't find her.
(45:16):
She's gone totally awol okay.
Speaker 18 (45:19):
I tried to call at Sylvia, but she doesn't answer
the phone. But I doubt that such kind of document
existed at all.
Speaker 8 (45:33):
I'm beginning to doubt it too. To be honest, I'm
beginning to doubt everything. In one fell swoop, I've managed
to lose the means, motive, and the opportunity for the
King's murder. And I just don't think Churchill had enough
to gain from murdering Boris, especially if he'd already started
secret talks with the Allies. So who did have something
(45:58):
to gain? And if it was and snake poison, how
did they do it. I've come back home to the UK,
to the archives because I've absolutely got to check something out.
I know it's a long shot, but what if Sylvia
really did find something? Something that I've somehow missed. So
(46:20):
along with my producer EJ I'm turning the files inside
out one last time until.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
Oh my god, that was just incredible.
Speaker 11 (46:31):
I can't believe it. What did you think I mean?
Speaker 8 (46:34):
Okay, sorry, now, I don't know if I found Sylvia's
missing document, but I think I might have found something
even better. So right at the top of it, it's
so secret. It says to be held under lock and key,
(46:57):
and written by the Japanese ambassador in Berlin. It's a
telegram destined for Tokyo announcing the strange death of King Boris,
the third and marked most secret, to be handled with discretion.
It's been intercepted and decoded by the British. Halfway down
(47:20):
it says that you know, there's suspicions that the king
was poisoned. And then in black and white here it
says by a British or Soviet plot. Well, we've discounted
the Brits, but what about the Russians? Because the telegram
(47:42):
says something else. It says the Communists are lying low
for the time being. Their time is not yet ripe
for action, not yet. But within a year of Boris's death,
the Red army will have marched into Sofia and occupied Bulgaria.
(48:04):
So was it the Soviets who wanted Boris out of
the way?
Speaker 11 (48:09):
Soviet plot?
Speaker 1 (48:11):
I mean that's there, we are. I mean it's in
black and white. For me, that that adds a whole
new dimension to this.
Speaker 8 (48:25):
Next time on The Butterfly King, Bulgaria's fortunes run red.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
That a lot of people, after words, were called then accused,
and a lot of people.
Speaker 8 (48:36):
Just disappeared, and a ghastly exhumation for the royal children.
Speaker 19 (48:41):
So they brought the coffin, and the coffin was of
course with a little glass window, and saw three children,
saw our papa three years after he had died.
Speaker 8 (49:07):
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and
Exactly Right Media, hosted by me Becky Milligan. It's written
and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by
Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis nank Manell and Toby Mattamoon. Sound
(49:27):
design and engineering by Toby Mattamoon and Daniel Lloyd Evans,
artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The Managing producer is a Mika
Schortino Nolan. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye.
The executive producer and head of Content at Blanchard House
(49:48):
is Lawrence Grizzell. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers
are Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer, with console
to producer Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by
the book Hitler and the King by John haul Spencer.
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Speaker 1 (02:13):
Goodbye Up Starboard.
Speaker 8 (02:21):
Nighttime March twenty fourth, nineteen forty four, and a British
Royal Air Force pilot circles his Wellington bomber over sleeping
Sofia tonight. He's been chosen to hit a very special target.
He's waiting for.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
His queue steady.
Speaker 8 (02:43):
The pilot jabs the rudder hard right and the wing
bucks upwards. He's not alone in the pitch dark sky.
It's crowded up here. Forty other British bombers swoop over
the Bulgarian capital and in this thick cloud concentrations.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Everything I see that keep on cough.
Speaker 8 (03:05):
Sofia is under attack again. In his drafty cockpit, the
pilot is blinded by flashes of exploding bombs hitting their targets,
strings of bombs rained down on the city. They're hitting industrial,
government and residential areas. But this pilot hasn't opened his
(03:28):
bomb doors. His shells have an altogether different destination. He's
not there yet, just a couple more miles. All through
the winter and now into the spring, hundreds of British
and American bomber planes have attacked Bulgaria from the air,
(03:50):
the cities in ruins. Bulgaria has no soldiers in active combat,
but she's signed a symbolic declaration of war on Britain
and America, and in the eyes of the Allies, she
deserves this beating.
Speaker 9 (04:05):
Yet below, clown.
Speaker 8 (04:07):
The Wellington's bombay is crammed with heavy blockbuster and incendiary
bombs just waiting to be dropped, but the pilot's navigator
directs him southeast away from the city, away from the
other bombers. They're very close. Now it's time. The pilot
(04:29):
closes the throttle and the plane begins to dive, because
tonight there's a new target, a very deliberate target, Vana Palace,
home to the Bulgarian royal family.
Speaker 10 (04:47):
Here we go on yours open.
Speaker 8 (04:49):
And in the palace, cowering in a bunker are Queen
Giovanna and her children, eleven year old Maria Louisa and
the boy King's Simeon. They're absolutely petrified. Their father, King Boris,
has been dead for nearly seven months. A suspected victim
of murder. He signed a pat with Hitler and now
(05:14):
his family is paying the price and buns away the
furious formation of Wellington's Pumel Varanha from the sky.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Again and again.
Speaker 8 (05:28):
This is a made to measure revenge raid and it's
been personally ordered by one man who just cannot forgive
Boris's treachery. Sir Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, has
(05:49):
no mercy for the young royals. Did he also sign
the order to kill their father.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
From Blanchard's House?
Speaker 8 (06:03):
And exactly right, Media, this is the Butterfly King. I'm
Becky Milligan, Chapter four. A Snake is still a snake.
(06:59):
I'm back in Bulgaria in the grounds of Vrana Palace
with my producer e J to pay another visit to
King Simeon and his sister, Princess Maria Louisa. And as usual,
our taxes dumped us miles away from the palace door,
long old walk.
Speaker 11 (07:18):
I know, but there's no way in.
Speaker 8 (07:20):
There're just gates everywhere and guards who won't let us in.
Speaker 12 (07:25):
It was nice when he realized we were coming for
the king. I think he thought we were a bit,
you know, sort of groupiees. I mean, if you banged
on a gate like that, at Buckingham Palace.
Speaker 11 (07:35):
I know, yes, I liked your foreign lord.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
It's very good, Bulgarian.
Speaker 13 (07:41):
I think.
Speaker 8 (07:43):
You'll remember that Varana Palace was King Boris's go to place,
his countryside getaway. He felt safe here, catching his butterflies
and playing with his children.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Now you know what Varana means, don't you? No crow?
Speaker 11 (07:58):
Really?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And you know what the collective noun for a group
of croses.
Speaker 11 (08:03):
A murder of crows? How fitting is that?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Of course?
Speaker 8 (08:09):
The official reason for Boris's death is that he died
of a heart attack, but as we've established, his strange
symptoms suggest he was poisoned. That's what his daughter, Maria
Louisa has believed all these years.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
She was just ten when her father died.
Speaker 8 (08:25):
She's now eighty nine, and we're actually visiting her on
a rather special occasion, the Princess's birthday, and we have
brought a couple of We got a rather nice little
present for her biscuits.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, everybody likes a biscuit.
Speaker 8 (08:41):
It's not a dad, but yes, Maria Louisa is turning ninety.
Speaker 11 (08:47):
I am a bit worried about the flavors.
Speaker 12 (08:49):
Rose and violet roses a little bit calls to Newcastle.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Actually because Bulgaria is famous for roses. I did think
about that afterwards.
Speaker 11 (08:57):
Do you like violet flavored biscuits?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
I don't think I've ever had one.
Speaker 11 (09:02):
Actually, quite disgusting.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
They really hope she doesn't offer us one. Well, I'm
not going to have one.
Speaker 8 (09:09):
Maria Louisa has flown into Sofia from New York to
celebrate with her brother, King Simeon.
Speaker 12 (09:14):
She must be jet bag because I actually got here
yesterday all the day before.
Speaker 11 (09:18):
I don't know if you have jet leg when you're older.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
It's worn out all the time, aren't you. We're worn
out all the time.
Speaker 8 (09:29):
The thing is, we're both feeling a bit nervy because
today we have to broach a rather tricky subject, the
possibility that Winston Churchill and Britain may have been responsible
for their father's death. So I'm slightly fearful about the
kind of welcome we're going to get.
Speaker 12 (09:49):
Look, here comes a big, posh looking car Loo. Yes,
then come to get us talking of distrust. That looks
like an sort of armorplated car, doesn't it.
Speaker 11 (09:59):
Oh my god, it's just stopping.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
It might be the king. It is the palaces.
Speaker 11 (10:03):
This way, which way up here?
Speaker 8 (10:06):
Oh my god, we're going to hear the accelerator though,
I don't want us to do the story anymore.
Speaker 11 (10:13):
Don't look, Oh, don't hear me else following us. Oh
my god, I'm quite shore. We walk past quickly.
Speaker 8 (10:20):
The thing is, we now think we know how Boris
was killed. We found evidence in two sources, the London
Archives and the diary of the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebels.
They both tell us it was an Asiatic or Indian
poison which did for the king, probably snake poison. And
(10:41):
guess who has ready access to Asia. During the war
in nineteen forty three, Britain was an imperial power with
colonies across South and Southeast Asia. The British and their
Commonwealth allies were fighting a savage war against the Japanese
(11:02):
in the jungles of Indonesia and Malaysia. Conditions for the
troops were pretty terrible. For every soldier wounded in battle,
another one hundred and twenty fell sick due to tropical illnesses.
They were bitten by mosquitoes, bugs, and of course snakes.
(11:23):
In fact, before they went to bed at night, soldiers
were worn to check their beds to make sure they
didn't get any nasty surprises. But it wasn't just those
snakes that concerned the British. This Royal Air Force film
(11:44):
from nineteen forty one clearly identifies another treacherous snake, at
least in the eyes of the Brits, a snake hiding
in the Royal Palace in Sofia.
Speaker 14 (11:56):
King Boris Bulgaria lies between Greece and Romania.
Speaker 8 (12:00):
Remember, Bulgaria had started the war insisting on her neutrality.
King Boris wanted to stay out of it all, but
he broke his word.
Speaker 14 (12:11):
King Barris agreed to keep out of the war if
we respected Bulgaria's utility. We kept our promise, but already
Barris was flooding with Hitler.
Speaker 8 (12:21):
And when Boris signed that pat with Hitler, Churchill was livid.
To Churchill, honor was everything, and his anger went deep.
The previous winter, Britain had signed the largest surrender in
British history when Singapore fell to Japan. It was a
humiliating defeat for the Empire, a loss of face that
(12:44):
Churchill found very hard to swallow. The Allies were losing
thousands of men every week, yet Boris had managed to
avoid sending a single Bulgarian soldier to the front was
engaged in active combat. Historian Tessa Dunlop reckons Churchill despised
(13:06):
Boris for that.
Speaker 13 (13:07):
What's interesting is, unlike, for example, the Romanians, who are
holess Bolus in bed with the Germans, Boris walks this
enigmatic line and I think that's almost infuriating, Like you
can hate the Romanians, but by God, they got their
come up and in Russia they were murdered like flies,
you know. Whereas Bulgaria, it seems like they've had a
(13:31):
pretty easy ride of the war. To be honest with you,
a little bit of light occupation.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
And let's not forget that symbolic declaration of war that
Bulgaria made on Britain and America.
Speaker 13 (13:42):
How can you symbolically be at war with someone talk
about wanting to have it both ways?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Well, if you're Churchill, what.
Speaker 13 (13:48):
Are you going to make of that? You know you're
not going to think, oh, Boris is my new best friend.
Speaker 8 (13:52):
And what's more, Boris has done it all in the
shadows by playing the system.
Speaker 13 (13:57):
He's managed to get his and that probably sticks in
the crawl, don't you think of Churchill. I mean this
man at Churchill stakes his identity on taking the fight
to the enemy on the lending stages, even though he's
never going to bloody have to.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Do and all that kind of jazz.
Speaker 13 (14:13):
And Boris does the exact opposite, which is head down
work as many people as you can, play them off
against each other, don't play your hand until you absolutely
have to.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And he's done it really rather well.
Speaker 8 (14:24):
That's infuriating, even more so because Britain had been double
crossed by Boris's family, the Saxe Coburgs before, and.
Speaker 14 (14:34):
Barris soon followed his minister being met at the station
by the fire himself. And like his father in the
last war, he betrays his people.
Speaker 8 (14:44):
Like his father, Boris' dad, Foxy Ferdinand, had been courted
by the British and French in World War One. They
hoped he'd be their ally, but Foxy was also secretly
being wooed by the Germans, and in the end he
decided he'd be better off with them and for Churchill
(15:05):
than Boris. This is where it all gets personal. Both
men had fought in the First World War on opposite sides.
Of course, Boris with the Triple Alliance that's Germany, Austria,
Hungary and Italy, and Churchill with the Triple Entente that's Britain,
France and Russia. And Churchill still held that grudge. He
(15:27):
just couldn't let it go.
Speaker 13 (15:29):
They think Boris is more Saxe Coburg treachery. Don't forget
Boris is the son of Ferdinand berdanand the only king
in the Balkans to not fight alongside the Entente in
the First World War.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
Did Churchill expect Boris to pay for the sins of
his father? Boris's decision to ally with Hitler sent shockways
through the British establishment, and that broken promise left more
than one British diplomat feeling like a fool. Diplomats like
(16:04):
Lord George Lloyd. And how do I know because on
one of my trips to the archives I came across
his private papers.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
So we get the real.
Speaker 8 (16:15):
Sort of gossipy side of this. You know, you just
don't forget all this. He was feeding that to London. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean that's what his job was, wasn't it. I
expect they all sort of and they heard something interesting.
They're on the blower, as they would say. Then yeah,
on the blower. So intriguing, isn't it to have access
now to you know all of that correspondence and his thoughts,
(16:39):
and you know all those little bitchy comments.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
It's interesting.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
Lord Lloyd was the chairman of the British Council. It's
the sort of cultural arm of the Foreign Office, designed
to create good relations overseas. In the winter of nineteen
thirty nine he was sent on a tour of the
Balkans to try and shore up support for the war.
Now Lord Lloyd was no fool. He was also a spy,
(17:08):
and his personal letters show he had a waspish tongue.
Speaker 10 (17:13):
I dined that night with Colonel Ross, our military attache,
a dinner that would have been pleasant had it not
been for the volubility of Monsieur Chezon, the League of
Nations representative, who may conceivably be interesting on politics, but
who on military affairs is as ignorant as he is asserted.
The remaining guests were not of great interest. My impression
of him was that he was a rather tiresome windbag.
(17:34):
The next day, at seven point thirty, we left for Sofia,
only to be told the ferry would not leave for
some three quarters of an hour, so we went into
a cottage on the key, drank some coffee with bad brandy,
and came to an overheated and reasonably unspeakable restaurant to
have breakfast.
Speaker 8 (17:49):
Lord Lloyd first met King Boris in nineteen thirty nine.
That was long before Boris teamed up with Hitler and Well.
Lloyd was charmed by him, particularly by the King's affection
for his royal British cousins, the Windsors.
Speaker 10 (18:05):
King Boris alluded to the invariable happiness of his visits
to England. He had especially enjoyed his visits to Bellmarle.
He showed me a small photograph of his late Majesty,
King George the Fifth, which he always kept on his
writing table in.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Front of him.
Speaker 8 (18:17):
He was so impressed that after his visit he even
wrote to King Boris.
Speaker 10 (18:22):
I have, since my audience with your Majesty, done my
best to convince everyone I meet of the strength and
sincerity of Bulgaria's neutrality.
Speaker 8 (18:31):
But a week or so later, Lord Lloyd popped over
the border to Yugoslavia, where he met their ruler, Prince Paul.
He told the Prince about his wonderful audience with the
trustworthy King Boris, the Prince gave him a very different view.
Speaker 10 (18:47):
Prince Paul laughed, merely replied that I was yet another
simple and guileless victim of King Boris's well known tactics.
Speaker 8 (18:54):
Prince Paul basically told Lord Lloyd he'd been had, and
that picture of King George the Fifth that Boris had
on his writing table, he.
Speaker 10 (19:02):
Said, as for the photograph, he kept many of them
of different kings and rulers and pulled out the proper
one for each listener.
Speaker 8 (19:10):
Crafty, Now, don't forget all this was being fed back
to the government, to Churchill, and while Lord Lloyd might
have been charming to the King privately, he became deeply
suspicious of him.
Speaker 10 (19:26):
I'm under no illusions as to the treachery and perfidy
of King Boris.
Speaker 8 (19:30):
And when Bulgaria signed a pact with Hitler, tempers boiled
over One of the papers I found in the archives
has an angry comment scrawled into the margin.
Speaker 10 (19:41):
Bulgaria will live to regret her decision.
Speaker 8 (19:46):
Is that a veiled threat from the British. Was Lord
Lloyd preparing the way for his spy network to assassinate Boris?
I mean I don't really need to spell out what
secret services get up to.
Speaker 15 (19:59):
Secret service, you know, there's a bit of a hint
on the name of the tid. They do operations in
secret which others cannot do.
Speaker 8 (20:08):
That's Colonel Hamish de Bretton Gordon, our weapons expert, remember
hiss ex military, and let's just say he's not unfamiliar
with covert operations.
Speaker 15 (20:19):
In wartime in the defense of the homeland. They're prepared
to do whatever it takes, he.
Speaker 8 (20:25):
Says, bumping off Boris doesn't sound like the sort of
thing British intelligence would do.
Speaker 15 (20:30):
Today, but I would never completely rule out that perhaps
these sort of things have happened in the past.
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Speaker 8 (23:53):
Oh okay, oh my god, Oh Nobby. At Verna Palace,
we're under thread when someone sets the dogs on us.
Speaker 12 (24:09):
All the King's dogs are cool booby, or at least
borises were just cool booby.
Speaker 10 (24:12):
Look it's working.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Luckily.
Speaker 8 (24:15):
Ej subdues the royal guard dogs with her special doggie voice.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
You're a rubbish guard dog.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Get money?
Speaker 11 (24:26):
How nice to see you again.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Lovely to see you.
Speaker 11 (24:29):
Should we go straight here?
Speaker 18 (24:30):
Yes?
Speaker 19 (24:31):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Perfect?
Speaker 8 (24:33):
Then Yavor, the King's suave and charming aid, comes to
our aid. But on our way into the palace there's
a difficult moment. Yavo casually points out the underground bunker
the royal family had built to protect themselves from Allied bombing.
Speaker 20 (24:50):
So after the start of the Second World War, they
decide to build a modern bunker. It's right here and this, yes,
this is the entrance. These bunkers say the old family
when this tower collapsed. It did collapse during the night.
King Simeon go out with the family.
Speaker 11 (25:07):
And then over under head.
Speaker 20 (25:08):
Yes they see the burning of the house because the
planes came from there, put the bombs here and continue.
But it was the few meters of the palace.
Speaker 8 (25:20):
And just when I'm thinking this visit can't get any
more awkward, Javo drops his own bombshell. His friend Sylvia,
a Bulgarian historian, has apparently found some damning evidence about
who murdered King Boris.
Speaker 21 (25:37):
When they were in UK. They found a document that
showed that the British wants to give weapons to someone
to assassin king bodies in Bulgaria.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
This is what the British. So it's the British.
Speaker 21 (25:57):
Yes, this is what she found.
Speaker 8 (25:58):
I think so yeah, falls claiming that a Bulgarian historian
has proof the British wanted King Boris dead and that
they were trying to arm someone to do the job
for them. I can hear Princess Maria Luisa and his
Majesty King Simeon coming down the corridor. We quickly try
and get the details from Yavel. The historian Sylvia has
(26:22):
found it in the UK. Yes, I think though, that's
what we need.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
We do need to speak to.
Speaker 21 (26:28):
Her really, yes, yes, yes, yeah, I will send them
a second message now to see issue.
Speaker 19 (26:33):
Answer me.
Speaker 5 (26:39):
A wonderfully.
Speaker 11 (26:47):
How are you doing with the jet lag?
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Is it you have to ignore the jet lag?
Speaker 19 (26:53):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Very good? Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 8 (26:56):
Perhaps our birthday biscuits might soften the mood. Her birthday
falls on an unfortunate day.
Speaker 19 (27:03):
Friday the thirteenth. Oh no, and it was Friday the
thirteenth when I was born. Oh my sorry, it doesn't
work for me, the bad luck and all that rubbish.
Speaker 11 (27:11):
Oh yes, throw that out the window.
Speaker 8 (27:14):
Anyway, this is for you from us, just because we
wanted to market and.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Oh my goodness, Heaven's sake, what is it.
Speaker 11 (27:20):
You can have a little We hope that this booze.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
It's not booze.
Speaker 8 (27:27):
No, oh god, we did think of booze, but then
we thought maybe it's biscuits.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I told DJ we should have got booze. Great, delighted, But.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
Then we have to get down to business and the
thorny subject of who killed Maria, Louisa and Simeon's father.
I hold off mentioning what Yavos just told us about
that document his friend found accusing the Brits of murder,
because I first want to explore whether the British the motive.
(28:02):
The Allied air raids began in April nineteen forty one
when Boris joined sides with Hitler, and they picked up
again in December of that year in response to the
King's symbolic declaration of war. The British Prime Minister had
persuaded President Roosevelt that Bulgaria needed a sharp lesson. But
(28:26):
what's strange is the raids intensified after the King's death
in nineteen forty four.
Speaker 19 (28:37):
There were huge air raids over Sophia many, many times,
and many days, Sofia almost burned.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
It was ghastly times and it was absolutely terrible.
Speaker 19 (28:50):
We were covered bombs several times, absolutely horrible. And five
minutes after the old clear my mother would drive in
and visit peace people in the hospitals, and you know,
there was no water, no electricity.
Speaker 8 (29:05):
And then as we've heard, the raids became personal, directly
targeting for Anna Palace where the boy King Simeon was
hiding in that underground bunker with a little flashlight. He
still doesn't like talking about it. He once wrote that
he was sure they were all going to die. His
(29:25):
sister remembers watching her home go up in smoke.
Speaker 19 (29:30):
Sure, burn, do you remember seeing the flames? Sure, incendiary
bombs on the roof. The roof was burning in the roof,
of course, wounded people. Other people panicked and were screaming.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
And it didn't end there.
Speaker 19 (29:49):
Huge bomb fell in the garden and one of these
enormous bombs made a huge crater. And our chief gardener
decided were much too complicated to fill the hole, so
put the little pond. And we used to call it
Churchill's lake, But it's no longer there, No, But.
Speaker 8 (30:10):
It was over there, how terrifying, just missing by an inch.
So was Churchill just trying to frighten Bulgaria into changing
sides once Boris was dead? Or was he determined to
wipe out the entire royal family, a family he felt
was rotten to the core.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Why did he do it? Do you think.
Speaker 19 (30:33):
That she has to ask him?
Speaker 8 (30:35):
Up there, Maria Louisa is pointing her finger upwards towards Heaven.
She's not smiling. So Churchill certainly had a motive for
killing King Boris. And remember what Yavill told us about
that document his friend Sylvia found it sounds like the
(30:56):
British were creating their own opportunity. But that's where we've
got another mystery on our hands because Yavo's friend, Sylvia
won't pick up our calls.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
But it so happens.
Speaker 8 (31:10):
We know another friend of hers, her colleague in fact,
the very distinguished historian George Bosdaganoff.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
You might remember him.
Speaker 8 (31:19):
He gets ever so slightly frustrated with me from time
to time.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
So if you look at this.
Speaker 8 (31:27):
Right, I think that's nineteen forty three, and it's more
you want me to shut up, don't you.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (31:33):
Okay, yes, So I get my producer EJ. To call
him to ask him if he's familiar with Sylvia's discovery.
Speaker 22 (31:43):
I'm absolutely sure I haven't seen such a document that
British have an agreement for killing czar Boris. I'm hearing
about this document for the first time in my life
from you now just now.
Speaker 9 (32:00):
Yes, I found it rather surprising, and I thought if
anybody has found something like that, it would be the
great detective historian mister bosba gun Off himself.
Speaker 22 (32:14):
Thank you, I find such a document at all.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 22 (32:23):
You're a colleague money gun also.
Speaker 11 (32:26):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 8 (32:27):
I'm here and thank you.
Speaker 11 (32:28):
It was it was lovely to.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Speak to you.
Speaker 8 (32:33):
Okay, come, he's missing me already, at least his promised
to try to reach Sylvia for us.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Well.
Speaker 8 (32:44):
So, yeah, so he thinks it's a mistake, a.
Speaker 12 (32:49):
Mistake unless Sylvia's squirreled away a document without telling him.
Speaker 11 (32:53):
He's quite indignant, isn't he that?
Speaker 8 (32:56):
You know, if it's true there's a document, he will
be really cross. Well, let's see what he can find.
Back to nineteen forty one, Sofia and our list of
British motives for murdering Boris. Boris has allied with the
Nazis and the situation in the city is getting worse
(33:17):
at the British embassy staff are terrified, with.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Good reason under Nazi orders.
Speaker 8 (33:28):
The Bulgarian police start arresting British embassy staff. A British
official is kidnapped, the ambassador's butler disappears. And we know
this because in the archives I came across another set
of private papers that shed light on our investigation, the
papers of the British Ambassador to Bulgaria, Sir George Rendell,
(33:54):
the man at the heart of the action. He telegrams
London in fury.
Speaker 10 (34:01):
Methods adopted by Bulgarian authorities have been intolerable. Arrest of
the Bulgarian employees of the Press Office was entirely unjustifiable,
and removal of the legation Butler without notice was an
affront in which I cannot acquiesce with any dignity. We
must now write off King Boris as a dead loss.
Speaker 8 (34:19):
Rendall's twenty one year old daughter lives with him, and
he fears for her safety and for the safety of
his sixty embassy staff.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
He's right to.
Speaker 8 (34:35):
Under Rendall's direction, the British mission packs up and DeCamps
to Turkey. On the eleventh of March nineteen forty one,
the ambassador and his diplomatic party arrive at the pair
of Palace hotel in istanbul Hell.
Speaker 10 (34:52):
May I just have the keys to my room, please,
Sir George Rendall. I don't worry about her bags for now.
You can get the boy to bring him up.
Speaker 8 (34:58):
Bound by, Rendell and his daughter are given rooms on
an upper floor. That twist of fate saves both their lives,
because a few minutes after they check in, someone has
(35:19):
planted a bomb in their luggage. Six people are killed,
including two members of Rendell's staff, both young women. Several
other people are badly injured. Who could have planted the
(35:39):
explosives well. The train which had taken them from Sofia
to Istanbul was a private train, and it turns out
that this was the private train of King Boris, the
third of Bulgaria. So for the Brits there were only
two options. Guherrians had planted the bomb themselves or were
(36:03):
at the very least complicit. Either way, it wasn't a
good look. The hostility between Bulgaria and Britain had just
reached another level altogether. Rendel and the king had enjoyed
cordial relations over the years. They'd even bonded over their
(36:24):
butterfly collections, but in his end of mission statement, Rendel writes.
Speaker 10 (36:31):
As for the future of the country, it is dark. Indeed,
if Bulgaria meets with heavy punishment, she'll have nobody but
herself and her present rulers to blame.
Speaker 8 (36:43):
All the evidence points in the same direction. The British
had every reason to kill the king, but how did
they do it? Back to the jungle and that snake venom,
And keep in mind that the claim Boris was killed
with snake venom comes from the private diary of Joseph Goebel's,
(37:06):
head of Nazi propaganda. Not really what you'd call a
trustworthy source, but why would he lie in his own diary?
So we know British troops were fighting in the jungles
of Asia. We also know there's a huge population of
deadly snakes in those jungles, and that their venom can
(37:27):
be milked, freeze, dried, and then injected into someone. Our
favorite snake expert, mark O'Shea told us so. But remember
that King Boris took six days to die. If you're
injected with deadly snake venom, wouldn't you keel over immediately?
Speaker 23 (37:45):
Not like you see in the moves where somebody gets
bitten and if all over dead, that doesn't happen.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
In fact, it all depends where precisely the venom's injected.
Speaker 23 (37:55):
There are so many different ways of doing injections intramuscular, intravenous, subcutaneously,
interpertor neally. Well not that one, thank you very much.
And then obviously the venoms got to spread from there
a little emphatics through the tissues, through.
Speaker 8 (38:08):
The blood, so a person injected with snake venom could
take a while to die, especially if the venom isn't
too potent, and we know the poor king lingered on
his deathbed.
Speaker 23 (38:21):
The same species could have a considerable amount of variation
in venom. When you milk the venom, you don't know
what concentration of venom is there, because it all depends
when the snake last used it.
Speaker 8 (38:34):
Okay, it's clearly not a precise science, but what if
the freeze dried venom wasn't injected, but was slipped into
his food.
Speaker 23 (38:45):
The point with venom is that snake venoms are protein,
so therefore your saliva will start the process of digestion
and your gut will finish it. The venom's probably not
going to be around long enough to actually do anything, so.
Speaker 8 (39:01):
Boris couldn't have been killed by swallowing snake venom. Mark's
actually tried it by accident.
Speaker 23 (39:07):
That is, I've caught a lot of spitting cobras and
they spit their venom at your face, and some of
that venom has gone into my mouth hit the back
of my throat. It's quite acrid. Generally, I'll just have
a swig of water or coffee.
Speaker 8 (39:21):
To take the taste away, remind me never to accept
a dinner invitation at Marx. So let's just recap Boris's
symptoms for a minute. He had a fever, he was vomiting,
his skin was covered in blotches, his red blood cells exploded,
then he lost consciousness, his liver packed up, and finally
(39:42):
he had a fatal heart attack. Does snake venom cause
such a reaction?
Speaker 23 (39:48):
Well, there isn't one answer to that, for the simple
fact that snake venoms are complicated cocktails of different toxins.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
This next bits very technical.
Speaker 23 (40:00):
You've got neurotoxins which affect the nervous system, hemotoxins that
affect the circulatory system, cytotoxins.
Speaker 8 (40:08):
That to be honest, all this is going a bit
over my head. I'm still feeling a bit sick thinking
of Mark's swallowing snake venom.
Speaker 23 (40:17):
And then suddenly, then you've got cardiotoxins that directly target
the heart.
Speaker 8 (40:24):
Cardiotoxins, a snake venom which directly attacks the heart. Have
I finally found what killed Boris? But but why does
there always have to be a butt.
Speaker 23 (40:40):
If there's damage to the blood vessels, I would expect
there to be signs of that in the kidneys, and
I would expect the urine to contain blood urine as
black as coca cola, right, probably amount of it, and
(41:01):
that's not been mentioned.
Speaker 8 (41:03):
Well, no, he's a king, for goodness sake, I can't
exactly ask about a file of royal pa never mind,
But now he's reviewed the symptoms. Does Mark agree it
could have been snake venom that killed King Boris?
Speaker 23 (41:20):
I'm absolutely positive that it wasn't It sounds great, it
sounds so sensational and exciting, But no, oh.
Speaker 8 (41:27):
Come on, We've got deadly Asian snakes whose venom causes
heart attacks.
Speaker 11 (41:32):
What more do you want?
Speaker 23 (41:34):
People can survive snake bites sometimes without any anti venom.
It's estimated that up to fifty percent of bites might
not be fatal even without treatment.
Speaker 11 (41:45):
Well, he could have been one of the unlucky few.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
I just don't go for that.
Speaker 23 (41:50):
If you really absolutely must bump somebody off, then don't
use snake venom. Use something that is guarantee to do
the job.
Speaker 8 (42:01):
But maybe better there's that sort of sense of you know,
the sort of fog of war and the mystery and
all the spies and let's do something a little bit,
you know different.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Why I can't say you can, I know you can't.
Speaker 23 (42:18):
I just don't say this as a as an efficient
means of getting rid of somebody nice, though it sounds
in a novel or something like that.
Speaker 8 (42:29):
Okay, I know when I'm beaten, looks like Gebels sent
me down a blind alley. So reluctantly I'm scratching out
snake venom as the means that killed the king. But
at least I've still got the British and Churchill in
the frame for the motive. All I have to do
now is pluck up the courage to confront Simeon and
(42:50):
Maria Louisa, to admit to them that I think my
own countrymen killed their father. But our interview doesn't go
the way I'd imagined at all.
Speaker 5 (43:02):
That's just nonsense.
Speaker 19 (43:04):
We were too small and unimportant for Britain to send
somebody and put poison in his soup.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
I don't believe it.
Speaker 8 (43:11):
It turns out the royal siblings have already researched Britain's
potential motives for killing the king, and they've crossed the
British off the list of suspects there's a very good
reason why. Turns out that by nineteen forty three, King
Boris was in secret talks with the Allies to try
to change sides.
Speaker 19 (43:32):
The British had no advantage of it because my father
already we were all trying desperately to ask for Western help.
Speaker 8 (43:46):
Yes, because Churchill was pretty vociferous about Bulgaria and your.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Father, Yeah, but not to the point of poisoning him.
Speaker 8 (43:56):
They know all about the Asian snake venom theory too,
and like me, they've dismissed it.
Speaker 5 (44:02):
This was one of the Nazi theories, part of the propaganda.
They said that it was a snake poison but it
was only found in British Guyhanna, So obviously trying to
point to the British intelligence for having done the job.
Speaker 11 (44:23):
But why would they have wanted to do that.
Speaker 5 (44:25):
We're on the wrong side in the war, so that
you could think that there's a reason that they should
eliminate the king.
Speaker 8 (44:34):
So the Nazi propaganda minister's diaries were just another piece
of propaganda. Turns out Goebels was counting on his diaries
being published. They were not his private thoughts at all.
And of course we're in the middle of the war,
where everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else and
(44:55):
passing the back. It seems only chasing red herrings here.
And remember Sylvia Yavel's friend who found that document blaming
the British. She'd discovered it in the British archives. Apparently, well,
even Bulgaria's leading historian, George bos Deganoff can't find her.
(45:16):
She's gone totally awol okay.
Speaker 18 (45:19):
I tried to call at Sylvia, but she doesn't answer
the phone. But I doubt that such kind of document
existed at all.
Speaker 8 (45:33):
I'm beginning to doubt it too. To be honest, I'm
beginning to doubt everything. In one fell swoop, I've managed
to lose the means, motive, and the opportunity for the
King's murder. And I just don't think Churchill had enough
to gain from murdering Boris, especially if he'd already started
secret talks with the Allies. So who did have something
(45:58):
to gain? And if it was and snake poison, how
did they do it. I've come back home to the UK,
to the archives because I've absolutely got to check something out.
I know it's a long shot, but what if Sylvia
really did find something? Something that I've somehow missed. So
(46:20):
along with my producer EJ I'm turning the files inside
out one last time until.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
Oh my god, that was just incredible.
Speaker 11 (46:31):
I can't believe it. What did you think I mean?
Speaker 8 (46:34):
Okay, sorry, now, I don't know if I found Sylvia's
missing document, but I think I might have found something
even better. So right at the top of it, it's
so secret. It says to be held under lock and key,
(46:57):
and written by the Japanese ambassador in Berlin. It's a
telegram destined for Tokyo announcing the strange death of King Boris,
the third and marked most secret, to be handled with discretion.
It's been intercepted and decoded by the British. Halfway down
(47:20):
it says that you know, there's suspicions that the king
was poisoned. And then in black and white here it
says by a British or Soviet plot. Well, we've discounted
the Brits, but what about the Russians? Because the telegram
(47:42):
says something else. It says the Communists are lying low
for the time being. Their time is not yet ripe
for action, not yet. But within a year of Boris's death,
the Red army will have marched into Sofia and occupied Bulgaria.
(48:04):
So was it the Soviets who wanted Boris out of
the way?
Speaker 11 (48:09):
Soviet plot?
Speaker 1 (48:11):
I mean that's there, we are. I mean it's in
black and white. For me, that that adds a whole
new dimension to this.
Speaker 8 (48:25):
Next time on The Butterfly King, Bulgaria's fortunes run red.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
That a lot of people, after words, were called then accused,
and a lot of people.
Speaker 8 (48:36):
Just disappeared, and a ghastly exhumation for the royal children.
Speaker 19 (48:41):
So they brought the coffin, and the coffin was of
course with a little glass window, and saw three children,
saw our papa three years after he had died.
Speaker 8 (49:07):
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and
Exactly Right Media, hosted by me Becky Milligan. It's written
and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by
Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis nank Manell and Toby Mattamoon. Sound
(49:27):
design and engineering by Toby Mattamoon and Daniel Lloyd Evans,
artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The Managing producer is a Mika
Schortino Nolan. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosie Pye.
The executive producer and head of Content at Blanchard House
(49:48):
is Lawrence Grizzell. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers
are Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer, with console
to producer Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by
the book Hitler and the King by John haul Spencer.
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