There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History

Carroll (Comandante: Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela), the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, recreates a real-life Day of the Jackal in this sterling account of a 1984 plot to assassinate British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Drawing on more than 100 interviews with “former IRA members, police detectives, bomb disposal experts, politicians, officials, and friends and relatives of key players,” as well as other sources, Carroll vividly describes the attack, which involved an Irish Republican Army operative placing a bomb at the Brighton, England, hotel where Thatcher was staying during a Conservative Party conference. The explosive was smuggled into the hotel and detonated by Patrick Magee, who, despite being on the radar of numerous security agencies for more than a decade, was able to check into the hotel and plant the bomb that came disturbingly close to killing Thatcher­­­­; five others died and more than 30 were wounded in the explosion. Carroll gives the definitive account of this terror attack, delving into the security lapses and placing the events in a larger geopolitical context: “For want of two minutes, or a few feet, history could have turned, and with it the fate of Northern Ireland, Thatcherism, and the Cold War.” This is must reading for anyone interested in the history of the Troubles. Agent: Will Lippincott, Aevitas Creative Management. (Apr.)