AS a keen student of American history, I have spent many hours at the sites where US political figures were assassinated and where they are buried.

I don’t find it macabre - you may disagree - but it fascinates me to see the places where momentous events happened. Perhaps it’s the journalist in me.

I have dragged travelling companions to Dealey Plaza in Dallas to see where John F Kennedy was shot in 1963.

I have stood at the picket fence and worked the angles, I have stood where Abrahim Zapruder shot his film and, of course, I have stood at the window in the Texas Schoolbook Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that were heard around the world – or did he?

I then stood in the snow (it always seems to be snowing when I go) at the Kennedy grave in Washington DC’s Arlington Cemetery, to complete the circle, as it were.

It’s a dit for another day but my greatest hero is Martin Luther King and on several journeys through the American south, I have traced the Georgian’s life and death.

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The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee is now a museum to the civil rights cause and a fascinating place to visit. The room where King stayed in his final days is left untouched and the balcony where he stood when he was shot in 1968 is preserved.

Across the road is the boarding house where King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, lay in wait. I have stood in the bathroom where he fired his shots, mortally wounding the man whose sole aim was to make the world a better place.

And King’s mausoleum in his home town of Atlanta is one of the most peaceful places I have ever known and somewhere I have frequently sat and pondered life.

Although I find his polemics abhorrent and think he is the greatest danger to the world since Hitler, Donald Trump does not deserve to be murdered for his views.

He is a vacuous blusterer and anything he says must be taken with several pinches of salt – just ask the putative hungry pet owners of Springfield and anyone who tried to inject themselves with disinfectant to counter the effects of Covid.

That Trump has been the subject of not one but two assassination attempts in recent weeks should worry us all.

It is an assault on democracy and asks many questions about the efficacy of the Secret Service.

And if two people in gun-crazy America, and if I’m being honest there’s probably a whole lot more, feel the need to try to shoot him, then perhaps he should think long and hard about changing his policies. Or consider not standing for President.