You can’t beat a short break when you’re really busy which is why my wife and I took the opportunity to visit Athens last week. It’s a crowded city, and the poverty can bring tears to your eyes, but it proved to be a veritable ‘oasis of peace’ in a scorched desert!

We were only there for a few days, but it gave us chance to catch up on some reading. I chose Anita Anand’s masterful biography of Udham Singh, the man who assassinated Sir Michael Dwyer, the lieutenant-governor of Punjab at the time of the Amritsar Massacre in April 1919.

I could have chosen something lighter of course but I am a ‘history buff’ and thankfully the blurb on the cover proved trustworthy. ‘The Patient Assassin’ is clearly meticulously researched and does read ‘like something from a thriller’. It also highlights truths worth remembering.

It shows us that we can be unbelievably callous when we have been entrusted with power. As Lord Acton famously said, “All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That’s why a British ‘officer and gentleman’ could claim that “public whippings were the kindest method of punishment” because they were the “only language Indians really understood” and another could issue an order that anyone wishing to cross the street where a British lady had been attacked had to crawl on all fours. As a result, people whose only crime was to live on that street, found themselves “brutalised and humiliated” every time they tried to return home. It was the same officer who ordered his men to open fire on more than 15,000 people, (including children) because he had been told an unauthorised political meeting was taking place.

The book is also a reminder that there are times when it can prove helpful to step back and take the long view. As Anand says, ‘Liberation from British rule would come’ but ‘at a terrible price’. As for Mahatma Ghandi he is now highly esteemed for his emphasis on nonviolent protest as a means of achieving political and social progress.

Udham Singh’s determination to seek out and kill the British official he believed was ultimately responsible for the massacre can teach us a valuable lesson too. His burning desire for vengeance seems to have lasted for more than 20 years and this should prompt us to ask what seeds of revenge are being sown in the struggles we see going on today.

I don’t think I can finish without pointing out that the officer who ordered his troops to fire wanted to die because it would mean that he would be able to ask his Maker whether he did right or wrong on that fateful day in 1919. I reckon we all do well to keep that in mind as we decide what we should do. That’s why it makes sense to ask Him for guidance now rather than wait to find out.