“Killing Thatcher” tells the full story of the Brighton bombing
Rory Carroll recounts the IRA plot to assassinate the prime minister in 1984 and the ensuing manhunt
Just after midday on September 15th 1984, a neatly dressed young man carrying an unusually heavy suitcase walked up to the reception desk of the Grand Hotel in Brighton and asked for an upper-floor room with a sea view. The smiling receptionist offered him room 629. All he had to do now was fill in the registration card with his false name and an address in London, and avoid leaving any fingerprints. By a stroke of luck, 629 was one of the rooms that best suited his plan: to plant a bomb with a long-delay timer that would detonate in the early hours of the morning 27 days later—and kill Britain’s prime minister and much of the cabinet.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The long fuse of history”
Culture April 1st 2023
More from Culture
Ovation inflation has spread from Broadway to London’s West End
Why do dud plays get standing ovations?
Are mystics kooks or valuable disrupters?
A realist’s refreshing take on mysticism
Sex and Snow White: how Grimm should children’s books be?
The German authors suggest very, but today trends run the opposite way
Jimmy Lai’s trial is a headline-worthy example of injustice
A new biography aims to keep the public’s attention on the pro-democracy tycoon
Millennials and Gen Z are falling hard for stuffed animals
Plushies are cute, cuddly and costly
Ten years after the Charlie Hebdo attack, satire is under siege
Public support is waning for the right to offend