It was nearly 3 a.m. when the bomb detonated. The Irish Republican Army’s assassination attempt on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984 was unsuccessful, but five other people were killed. Our latest release chronicles the events leading up to the near miss.
A Near-Perfect Plan
Only one sitting British prime minister had been successfully assassinated. But the IRA came very close. The bomber used a time-delayed device, which allowed him to place it more than three weeks before it exploded during a conference that Thatcher attended. The blast took out multiple floors of a hotel and caused a chimney stack to collapse, but Thatcher insisted on giving her speech as planned.
