On 12 October 1984 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempted to assassinate members of the British government, including the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England.

A partial palm print was found on the room registration card from when Magee checked in and police surveillance on IRA members led them to him.

[5] In March 1979 Neave, the shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland, was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army in a car bomb attack in the Palace of Westminster.

[6][7][8][9] On 27 August 1979—less than four months after Thatcher became prime minister—Mountbatten was killed by a bomb on his fishing boat, off the coast of Mullaghmore, County Sligo, in the Irish Republic.

[20] English highlights as examples comments about Thatcher from the IRA member Danny Morrison: "that unctuous, self-righteous fucker" and "the biggest bastard we have ever known".

[34] In 1983 Magee was part of the ASU that planned to bomb the Eagle and Child pub in Lancashire, popular with soldiers as it was situated next to Weeton Barracks.

His IRA handler in England was Raymond O'Connor, who rented a flat for Magee and a comrade, and drove the pair to the location to view the target.

O'Connor had been arrested by Lancashire Special Branch the previous year and been identified as a member of the IRA; he had been recruited by police as an informer and was passing details of Magee's mission to them.

[41] After completing the hotel's registration card, Magee gave a false address (27 Braxfield Road, London, SE4), stated he was English, omitted his passport details and paid £180 for three nights' stay.

[51] On the evening of 11 October Norman Tebbit—secretary of state for trade and industry—and his wife Margaret attended a reception hosted by Alistair McAlpine, the treasurer of the Conservative Party; they left at around midnight and returned to their room.

[59] The force of the explosion going upward broke through the roof and dislodged one of the hotel's chimney stacks; eleven feet (3.4 m) tall, it weighed five long tons (5.1 t).

[71][72] After the explosion Tebbit and his wife ended up next to each other, twelve feet (3.7 m) above the hotel's reception, both alive but buried under tonnes of rubble; they held hands and talked to each other for comfort.

With the conference due to restart at 9:00 am that morning, McAlpine hired a coach and several taxis to take them to a local branch of Marks & Spencer at 8:00 am, which he had arranged to be opened early for them.

[97] An Phoblacht (The Republic)—the republican newspaper published by Sinn Féin, the political party associated with the IRA—ran the headline "IRA Blitz Brits".

[100] Similarly, the editorial of The New York Times stated "the IRA has turned overseas for support it cannot find in Dublin, playing on the gullibility of a small minority among the 40 million Americans of Irish descent".

Over eight hundred long tons (810 t) of rubble was collected in nearly 3,800 plastic dustbins and sent to the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead, Kent.

[109] The Anti-Terrorist Branch of the police informed the investigation team of an IRA cache found in Salcey Forest which had a missing timer that was possibly set to twenty-four days, six hours and thirty-six minutes.

On 15 June he and a female partner rented a room at the Rubens Hotel, overlooking the Royal Mews, which is situated on the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

[j] They rented room 112 for £70 for one night and planted a pre-assembled bomb that comprised 3 pounds 9 ounces (1.6 kg) of gelignite, set with a long delay timer to explode at 1:00 pm on 29 July.

A decision was made not to arrest the two men immediately, but to continue following them as the pair returned to the rented flat in Langside, Glasgow, where the rest of the England Department ASU were staying.

[126] Also included with the accused was Shaun McShane, an IRA sympathiser who had assisted the England Department with providing premises where they could stay; he was charged with aiding and abetting.

[133][k] The rise in such attempts, and the events at Brighton, changed the approach taken by the British government to turn Britain into a "permanent counter-assassination state", according to the historian Simon Ball.

The previously relaxed view of Special Branch close protection officers had already been under review prior to Brighton, and a new bodyguard system was implemented by Thatcher a few days after the bombing.

[135] In the House of Commons debate on the bomb, Leon Brittan, the home secretary, said: Total security is impossible in a free, democratic society.

Special Branch provided more than a hundred officers for government and diplomatic protection to counter threats and assassination attempts, which cost the Metropolitan Police £59 million a year in 1993.

[137][138][l] The journalist David Hughes, who was covering the Brighton conference for The Daily Telegraph writes that the bomb, and the subsequent changes in security provision "marked the end of an age of comparative innocence.

[156] In the opinion of the political scientist Feargal Cochrane, the bomb acted as "a catalyst" for the discussions that led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement on 15 November 1985, despite opposition from within Thatcher's own party.

[159] This was later quashed as part of the Good Friday Agreement and Magee was released under licence in June 1999, despite a challenge by Jack Straw, the home secretary, to stop it.

It had evidently been more comfortable for me to live with the perception that as a Tory he was simply the enemy, a warmonger, driven by greed, without a personal moral code or a rounded background.

[163]The two met again several times and became friends, giving talks together at reconciliation events; in 2009 they formed the organisation Building Bridges for Peace, which aimed to bring divided communities together through dialogue.