RTE 2fm ‘The Tubridy Show’ 02.09.2012

Ryan Tubridy   Here’s a quote, ‘We all have a car crash in our lives and 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 […]


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BBC Radio Kent 04.09.2009

PART ONE   Dominic Kent   He had an idyllic childhood in Kent, growing up in Mersham near Ashford. But in 1979 at the age of fourteen, Timothy Knatchbull’s world was shattered when he took a boat trip off the coast of Ireland. The Provisional IRA blew up the vessel assassinating his grandfather, Lord Mountbatten of […]


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News from Timothy Knatchbull

The death of Countess Mountbatten of Burma On Tuesday, June 13th, 2017 the 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma (Patricia) died peacefully at her home in Kent surrounded by her children. She was 93. A celebration of her life was held two weeks later at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge, London and the following day she […]


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Extracts of ‘From a Clear Blue Sky’

‘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, […]


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Irish History

1169 Henry II oversees an Anglo Norman invasion of Ireland, establishing an English presence for the first time 1689 James II lands in Ireland and supported by a catholic army reigns from Dublin 1801 The Act of Union creates the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 1813 First recorded sectarian riots in Belfast 1836 […]


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Prologue to ‘From a Clear Blue Sky’

            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 […]


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  • 'It is one of the most intensely moving stories I have ever read, and I was gripped from the first page.'

    Barbara Taylor Bradford


    'Testament to a remarkable, benevolent soul...With this public love letter he has found a way to say goodbye’. Sunday Times


    ‘It is one of the most penetrating and humane books to have emerged from the Troubles.’

    Irish Independent


    'This amazingly clear-headed and mature book...Intelligent, honest, tender and so moving that it should come with a warning to read this in private because you're going to be in a tear-stained mess.’ Daily Mail


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