‘Twins’ The heart of a human foetus starts to beat three weeks after conception. Mine started beating in the middle of March 1964. A few millimeters away another heart was beating alongside mine. It belonged to my identical twin. Our hearts beat in loose synchronicity over seven hundred million times until he was killed, […]
1694 10,000 acres of land in Sligo comes into the possession of Sir John Temple of East Sheen, Attorney General of Ireland 1704 Sir John Temple dies, his son Henry inherits his estate 1723 Henry Temple is created the first Viscount Palmerston of Palmerston in County Dublin 1757 1st Viscount Palmerston dies and is succeeded […]
We all have a car crash in our lives. To date I have had one; it happened to be a bomb. I was a boy at the time, on a small boat in Ireland. Three of my family and a friend died in the explosion. One of the dead was my identical twin brother Nicholas […]
What was your relationship to Earl Mountbatten of Burma? Lord Mountbatten was my maternal grandfather. His eldest daughter, Patricia, is my mother. After his wife, Edwina Mountbatten, died he devoted himself to his family. He was great fun and shared his grandchildren’s passion for toys and was a great storyteller. I learnt of his connections […]
On the morning of Monday 27 August 1979, Paul Maxwell asked me the time. He laughed when I told him it was eleven thirty-nine and forty seconds. We were as carefree as skylarks, out together in my grandfather’s small fishing boat off County Sligo on the west coast of Ireland. My identical twin brother Nicholas […]
