Killing Thatcher: The IRA, the Manhunt and the Long War on the Crown

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On one side, an elite IRA team aided by a renegade priest, US-raised funds and Libyas Qaddafi and on the other, intelligence officers, police detectives, informers and bomb disposal officers. It was the last day of the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in the coastal town of Brighton, England. This may seem crushingly obvious, but has to be emphasised because the great drama of the event lay in what did not happen.

The number of British politicians who were killed by republican groups was small, but British politics was changed for the worse. The privatisations that Tebbit had lauded in his speech on the day before he was injured went through. So far , the first 100 pages present some sort of very superficial effort to give a potted and poor summer of Irish History. Carroll has conducted over a hundred interviews but he does not really have much to add to what we already know about the Northern Ireland Troubles.In this fascinating and compelling book, veteran journalist Rory Carroll retraces the road to the infamous Brighton bombing in 1984 – an incident that shaped the political landscape in the UK for decades to come.

Bestseller'As taut as a fictional thriller' Mail on Sunday'Gripping, detailed and richly layered' GuardianKILLING THATCHER is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet - an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles and the most daring conspiracy against the Crown since the Gunpowder Plot. He checked in as Roy Walsh, later insisting he was unaware that it was the name of another IRA volunteer who had carried out a bombing in London in 1973, and paid in cash for a three-night stay in room 629, which afforded him an expansive view of the promenade and the sea. The great virtue of Carroll’s excellent book is that it takes the Brighton bombing back out of these parallel universes and into the real world of conflict in which it happened. He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 for which the IRA took full responsibility before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the Troubles in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. Thank you for coming”, she is recorded as saying to the emergency workers, who just didn’t know what to make of her.He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 – for which the IRA took full responsibility – before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the ‘Troubles’ in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands.

Carroll looks at the Brighton bombing in detail, following with an analysis of the scene, the aftermath and the manhunt to discover those who was responsible. Tebbitt never recovered from chronic pain and grief for his wife, also named Margaret, who was paralysed by the bomb, while Thatcher developed survivor’s guilt, feeling that she was responsible for his fate. British police had his fingerprints since his days as a juvenile offender in Norwich, where he spent some of his childhood. They got their chance in 1985 when Magee was sent to the mainland with an IRA unit planning to bomb seaside resorts. Five people were killed, including the MP and deputy chief whip Sir Anthony Berry, and Lady Jeanne Shattock, the wife of a local party chairman, who was decapitated by the full force of the blast.Mrs Thatcher was still fully dressed and polishing her speech for the final day of the Conservative Party conference when the bomb exploded five floors above her at 2. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH).