Informationen zum Autor Rory Carroll is a veteran journalist who started his career in Northern Ireland. As a foreign correspondent for the Guardian , he reported from the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, Latin American, and the United States. His first book, Comandante: Hugo Chavez's Venezuela , was named an Economist Book of the Year and BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He is now based in his native Dublin as the Guardian 's Ireland correspondent. Klappentext "A race-against-the-clock narrative that finally illuminates a history-changing event: the IRA's attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher and the epic manhunt that followed"-- Leseprobe Chapter One Mountbatten Louis Mountbatten rose at his usual time, just before 8:00 a.m., to a heartening vista outside his bedroom window. An azure sky unfurled over the Atlantic. After weeks of rain and foaming seas, the old man was finally getting sailing weather for the end of his Irish holiday. Mountbatten performed his calisthenics, a Canadian air force drill, and joined his family for breakfast in the dining room of Classiebawn Castle. He sent the poached egg back to the kitchen-the yolk was watery-but that didn't sour his mood. It was going to be a splendid morning for lobster potting. It was Monday, August 27, 1979, and Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten was enjoying retirement. He was on the periphery of Europe, far from great events, no longer facing monumental decisions, and perfectly content. Born in 1900, he had led a singular life that threaded the history of the twentieth century. His great-grandmother and godmother was Queen Victoria and his godfather Russia's Tsar Nicholas II. A naval officer and a favorite of Winston Churchill, he served as Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Southeast Asia during the war and later became Lord Mountbatten of Burma and the last viceroy of India. Dickie, as he was known to friends, was cousin to Queen Elizabeth and mentor to her husband, Prince Philip, and their son Prince Charles. Handsome, pompous, playful, exceedingly vain, Mountbatten had graced Europe's palaces and chanceries with movie star looks and scandalous gossip. On this August morning, his glory years long behind him, his once-ramrod posture somewhat saggy, he bossed around the only people he still could: his family. The grandchildren didn't mind because, since they were small, Grandpapa had been a font of stories, rhymes, and games. "Nick'las, Nick'las, don't be so ridic'las," he used to say to one grandson. Then, turning to Nicholas's identical twin, Timothy: "Timothy Titus, please don't bite us," followed by a lunge and gnashing of teeth. The grandchildren learned that if a wineglass was ringing, they must stop the reverberation because if it was left to fade into silence, somewhere a sailor would perish. Mountbatten also taught them the Bus Driver's Prayer, a parody of the Lord's Prayer that takes the driver around London: Our Farnahm, who art in Hendon, Harrow be thy name. Thy Kingston come; thy Wimbledon, In Erith as it is in Hendon. Give us this day our daily Brent And forgive us our Westminster, As we forgive those who Westminster against us. Mountbatten had been coming to Classiebawn, which overlooked Mullaghmore, a village in Sligo on Ireland's northwest coast, for thirty summers. It was a turreted Victorian manor house, not a true castle, but had a fairy-tale look. A flat-topped rock formation, Benbulben, brooded over a landscape of fields, woodland, and beaches. Shipwrecks from the doomed Spanish Armada that had tried to invade England in 1588 dotted the seabed. "No place has ever thrilled me more and I can't wait to move in," Mountbatten had exulted after first visiting Classiebawn. When not riding horses, writing letters, or playing b...

Autorentext

Rory Carroll is a veteran journalist who started his career in Northern Ireland. As a foreign correspondent for the Guardian, he reported from the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, Latin American, and the United States. His first book, Comandante: Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, was named an Economist Book of the Year and BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He is now based in his native Dublin as the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent.

Klappentext

"A race-against-the-clock narrative that finally illuminates a history-changing event: the IRA's attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher and the epic manhunt that followed"--

Zusammenfassung
Say Nothing meets The Day of the Jackal in this gripping and illuminating story about a history-changing moment of violence. Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, a lethal explosion, and the epic manhunt that followed—a Guardian journalist brings all of this together in the first full-length book about the 1984 Brighton Bombing.

The IRA bomb exploded at 2:54 a.m. on October 12, 1984, the last day of the Conservative Party Conference in the coastal town of Brighton, England. Rooms were obliterated, dozens of people wounded, five people killed. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in the lounge of her suite preparing her keynote speech when the explosion occurred; had she been just a few feet in another direction, flying tiles and masonry might have sliced her to ribbons. As it was, she survived—and history changed.
There Will Be Fire is the gripping story of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Thatcher and wiping out her party’s top leaders. It was the most spectacular attack ever linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles. Rory Carroll swiftly reveals the long road to Brighton: the decades-long Irish fight for freedom; the shocking 1979 assassination of Lord Mountbatten; and Thatcher’s dismissal of a hunger strike by republican prisoners, leading to the deaths of ten men. The birth of the Brighton plot, the hide-and-seek between the IRA and security services, the bomb, the manhunt—this is a drama with an eclectic cast, some famous, some still in shadows.
In There Will Be Fire, Carroll draws on his own interviews and original reporting, reveals new information, and weaves previously undetected threads to create a path-breaking narrative and to set the history straight. There Will Be Fire is journalistic nonfiction that reads like a thriller, a propulsive blend of true crime and political history propelled by a countdown to detonation.

Leseprobe
Chapter One
Mountbatten

Louis Mountbatten rose at his usual time, just before 8:00 a.m., to a heartening vista outside his bedroom window. An azure sky unfurled over the Atlantic. After weeks of rain and foaming seas, the old man was finally getting sailing weather for the end of his Irish holiday. Mountbatten performed his calisthenics, a Canadian air force drill, and joined his family for breakfast in the dining room of Classiebawn Castle. He sent the poached egg back to the kitchen-the yolk was watery-but that didn't sour his mood. It was going to be a splendid morning for lobster potting.
It was Monday, August 27, 1979, and Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten was enjoying retirement. He was on the periphery of Europe, far from great events, no longer facing monumental decisions, and perfectly content.

Born in 1900, he had led a singular life that threaded the history of the twentieth century. His great-grandmother and godmother was Queen Victoria and his godfather Russia's Tsar Nicholas II. A naval officer and a favorite of Winston Churchill, he served as Supreme Commander of Allied Powers in Southeast Asia during the war and later became Lord Mountbatten of Burma and the last viceroy of India.

Dickie, as he was known to friends, was cousin to Queen Elizabeth and mentor to her husband, Prince Philip, and their son Prince Charles. Handsome, pompous, playful, exceedingly vain, Mountbatten had graced Europe's …