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

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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.” if there is one thing to take away from this book, it is that the brighton bombing gave way to one of the hardest warnings of all time:

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.Moreover, some readers may be unsettled by his scrupulous even-handedness in detailing the motives and actions of terrorists and those attempting to save lives by thwarting them. He is ambivalent about two of his main characters. One is Gerry Adams, the calculating president of Sinn Féin, the Ira’s political wing: a brooding, manipulative presence who is the epitome of strategic patience. The other is Thatcher herself, who refused to be pressured by hunger strikers in the Maze prison into granting IRA inmates “special category status”. Ten of them died. This, above all, made the ira seek revenge against a woman they saw as a cruel and implacable foe. 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 aftermath of the IRA bombing at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, on October 12 1984. Picture: PA Wire. All this ended with the launch of an armed struggle by the Provisional IRA in 1969. The number of British politicians who were killed by republican groups was small, but British politics was changed for the worse. Politicians associated with Northern Ireland, defence, home affairs and justice – and, a fortiori, the prime minister – could no longer walk the streets or strike up casual conversations. Ministers became ever more remote from the people over whom they ruled; any intelligent person who wanted their family to have a tolerable life thought twice before going into politics. Less than three months later IRA bombs targeting Falklands veterans killed 11 soldiers in London’s Hyde Park and Regent’s Park on the same day. And just over two years after that, Mrs Thatcher narrowly escaped death when the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton, demolishing the bathroom of her first-floor suite, killing five people close to her and seriously injuring 33 others. It was a moment when “history pirouetted”, writes Dubliner Rory Carroll, Ireland correspondent of the Guardian newspaper, in this extraordinary account of how the IRA planned the Brighton bombing, who the bomber was and how he was caught.

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.The unknown things like No. 10 is like a Tardis or Maggie cooked own food. And all time you wonder how meny Roman Catholics would have died if IRA had killed Thatcher? Who’s It Good For? — Primarily, history and politics buffs, politicos with an interest in international affairs or modern history, the average reader who just wants to understand The Troubles / the IRA a bit better, Thatcher lovers and haters 😂

Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe.Magee got a life sentence with the recommendation that he serve at least thirty-five years. As it turned out, he was released after thirteen. He said nothing at the trial except to shout the words ‘our day will come’ in Irish as he was taken down to the cells after the verdict had been given. He derived some satisfaction from the fact that his reputation as a skilled bomb maker had been confirmed. 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.

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. 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. 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.

I can honestly say that it’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a book so much. Given the subject matter, perhaps ‘enjoyed’ is not the correct word to use - but certainly engaging and beyond interesting.