Timothy Knatchbull: From A Clear Blue Sky

by Knatchbull, Timothy

ISBN: 9780091931476

Published: 2009

A powerful survivor's account of the IRA bomb that killed the author's 14-year-old twin brother, his grandparents and a family friend, published on the 30th anniversary of the atrocity. Winner of the 2011 Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Award, and nominated for the 2009-2010 PEN/JR Ackerley prize. On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland. It was a trip that would cost four lives - and change his own for ever. The IRA bomb that exploded in their boat killed Knatchbull's grandfather Lord Mountbatten, his grandmother Lady Brabourne, his twin brother Nicholas, and local teenager Paul Maxwell. In telling this story for the first time, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy. For thirty years, Knatchbull has lived with the echoes of that day: the death of...