Opening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks. Magee’s ability to slip unnoticed in and out of England, despite being on the radar of British security forces, brought him inevitably to the Grand hotel on the morning of Saturday 15 September 1984.

Of the three principal players, it is Magee who emerges as the most enigmatic, unknowable character, a drifter whose life was given form by adherence to a single defining cause. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher looking pensive at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool. Opening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt – with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks. A real example of how a seemingly unsolvable problem can be solved if there is enough will on both sides.A combination of repulsion at the conduct of British soldiers in Belfast, grievance at the sectarian state, and sheer boredom seems to have led him into a life of ‘armed struggle’, as the IRA termed its campaign. This amount includes seller specified domestic postage charges as well as applicable international postage, dispatch, and other fees. The IRA plot, hatched in a Ballymun flat and a Tralee pub, was not initially approved by its army council, nor was Patrick Magee the first choice to carry it out. Her very first comments were to apologise for being Irish and advising me if this was upsetting me, she would get one of her colleagues to do the work,” McClean said.

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. 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. Opening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt – with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks. Photograph: Larry Ellis/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Margaret Thatcher and her husband, Denis, at the Conservative conference in Brighton, the morning after the bombing of the Grand hotel.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. In Carroll’s telling, culled from multiple sources and interviews, the devil is very much in the detail. The security services had been lax in protecting the Grand Hotel and in monitoring Magee’s movements before October 1984, but dogged and painstaking police work in Brighton, London, Belfast, Norwich and Dublin led to his capture and imprisonment.