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

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With high emotions and competing narratives on all sides, he said his goal was to be fair, accurate and empathetic. Categories — Nonfiction, History, Ireland/Northern Ireland, Margaret Thatcher, United Kingdom, Politics, IRA The book is marketed as ‘a blend of true crime and political history’. Most true crime writing takes crimes that are obscure or opaque and uses them to illustrate wider points about the society in which they took place. There was, though, never much mystery about the Brighton bomb. Many understood what had happened as soon as they heard the bang. Magee was eventually arrested and convicted but he was released from prison after the Good Friday Agreement. He wrote a book and spoke freely about what he had done – he once lectured to undergraduates in my own department. 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. At times, his account is padded with banal detail. We are told twice that down the corridor from the room in which Magee was setting the bomb, a guest was paying a photographer ‘to take erotic portraits of his female companion’. One sometimes senses that an author desperate to reach his daily quota of words is raising his eyes to heaven: ‘an azure sky unfurled over the Atlantic’; ‘the sun hung in a cloudless sky over London’; ‘a patch of sky [was] paling over the Palace Pier.’ Her survival and her anti-EU rhetoric made her a progenitor of Brexit and its unforeseen consequences for Northern Ireland, Carroll says, adding that this created “the great irony” that “it may be Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, not IRA bombs, that delivers a united Ireland”. A compelling, impeccably researched, and superbly written account of the 1984 Brighton bombing and attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher by the IRA.

I do remember 1984 when bomb went off but didn't know just how bad it was. Perhaps been a Labour man in my 20s in house full of Thatcher haters you did not realize that it was important. Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton the day after the bombing in 1984. Photograph: Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images So, add Carroll's name to that hypothetical list of nonfiction writers who are able to encase significant, highly-charged historical events in a palatable, easy-to-read, novel-like narrative structure, that will appeal to both academic and amateur historians alike. KILLING 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. 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. 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.After three years of planning, a time-bomb planted by Magee was detonated during the Conservative Party conference at the Grand Hotel on October 12, 1984, killing five people and injuring many more. 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. 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. From that moment on Thatcher became an enemy of the IRA – and the organisation swore revenge. Delivery with Standard Australia Post usually happens within 2-10 business days from time of dispatch. Please be aware that the delivery time frame may vary according to the area of delivery and due to various reasons, the delivery may take longer than the original estimated timeframe.

I was no fan of ‘Maggie’ but whatever your views of her she did have a democratic right to be PM, at least under the election laws of our great UK. So although no Tory supporter I thought the bombing of the Brighton hotel was an affront to democracy and she (along with the others at the hotel that night) certainly didn’t deserve being bombed or targeted in such a manner.

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I want the reader to see her as a human figure, she’s not just some icon with a halo of hair and a stern voice. She was also a human being and a politician.” The writing style is a journalistic nonfiction which reads like a thriller. It is very well written, no advanced knowledge is necessary to understand or gain value from reading this. Having been to school in both the United States and India, I like to think that I have gained a wider perspective on world history than I would have otherwise, but there are definitely gaping holes in my knowledge. The Troubles are certainly a subject I have basically no knowledge about. I was glad to find that this book, while focusing on one major incident, provides the context needed to get invested in the story. Rory Carroll, a Dubliner who reported from Belfast in the mid-1990s, when Northern Ireland’s Troubles were winding down—and is now the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent—has knitted together an impressive array of sources to tell, for the first time, the complete story of the plot to kill the British leader. He chronicles, too, the hunt to identify and then catch Mr Magee and his accomplices. The interior of the Napoleon suite bathroom at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, after the bombing. Photograph: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

If you want to truly test yourself as an author, an excellent prompt is, "Try to write a book about the Troubles without taking a side." Rory Carroll's There Will Be Fire is proof that it can be done and done very well at that. The gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher, Killing 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. I appreciated that the author remained quite neutral on the central question that motivated the Troubles, fairly portraying the good and bad actions of both sides. I also liked the wide variety of sources that Carroll was able to incorporate, giving the reader a peek into the many people who were involved in setting up the bombing as well as bringing Magee to justice.

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Lord Mountbatten was obviously high profile but was also a very soft target. There was some suspicion that the IRA felt somewhat upstaged by the INLA who assassinated (Conservative MP) Airey Neave at Westminster in 1979.” The book follows the story of the Brighton bombing in England in 1984. The bombing was executed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in their campaign to unite all of Ireland and very nearly killed Margaret Thatcher. Most of the book follows the bomber and then the police attempts to identify and arrest him. This is the very short version of an extremely long story. The book begins with Lord Mountbatten’s assassination by the IRA in 1979, an event which first drew the newly elected Thatcher into the Northern Ireland conflict.

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