He begins with the infamous execution of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 for which the IRA took full responsibility before tracing the rise of Margaret Thatcher, her response to the Troubles in Ireland and the chain of events that culminated in the hunger strikes of 1981 and the death of 10 republican prisoners, including Bobby Sands. Ministers became ever more remote from the people over whom they ruled; any intelligent person who wanted their family to have a tolerable life thought twice before going into politics.

Photograph: Larry Ellis/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Margaret Thatcher and her husband, Denis, at the Conservative conference in Brighton, the morning after the bombing of the Grand hotel. He wrote a book and spoke freely about what he had done – he once lectured to undergraduates in my own department. She was resolute, bullheaded, fully confident that what she was doing was in the interest of the vast majority, and with no compassion for the victims of her policies. In 1981, it was Thatcher’s absolute intransigence on the issue of political status for IRA prisoners that had led Sands and nine others to start the hunger strikes that led to their deaths. The Brighton bombing is a magnet for alternative histories, sliding doors theories in which it is possible to enter a world of infinite speculation about what might have followed had the most consequential British politician of her time been murdered that night.

On one side, an elite IRA team aided by a renegade priest, US-raised funds and Libya’s Qaddafi and on the other, intelligence officers, police detectives, informers and bomb disposal officers. The explosion and the carnage that followed are described in the 25 riveting and moving pages of the book’s central chapter. On one side, an elite IRA team aided by a renegade priest, US-raised funds and Libya’s Qaddafi and on the other, intelligence officers, police detectives, informers and bomb disposal officers. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in her suite when the explosion occurred; had she been just a few feet in another direction, flying tiles and masonry would have sliced her to ribbons. He checked in as Roy Walsh, later insisting he was unaware that it was the name of another IRA volunteer who had carried out a bombing in London in 1973, and paid in cash for a three-night stay in room 629, which afforded him an expansive view of the promenade and the sea.

As Carroll so vividly describes it, “Like a monstrous guillotine, it sliced through concrete, steel, and wood, all the way to the ground floor. He describes the hunger strikes of the early 1980s, as IRA prisoners starved themselves to death in protest at the conditions in which they were held, and the bombing campaign both in Northern Ireland and on the mainland. It was Adams who told Magee and others in Long Kesh that they could defeat the British if they built a political movement and retooled the IRA for a “long war”. Rejoice” declaimed Margaret Thatcher outside No 10 Downing Street, London, on April 25th, 1982, in her first media doorstep after British forces had triumphed in the 74-day Falklands War that had cost more than 900 lives.This book not only investigates the events around that day in depth, but also evokes the time period of the Troubles very well. What appeared to be a victory for Maggie turned out to be the biggest boost the Republican movement could ever have wanted. There Will Be Fire is journalistic nonfiction that reads like a thriller, propelled by a countdown to detonation.

Of the three principal players, it is Magee who emerges as the most enigmatic, unknowable character, a drifter whose life was given form by adherence to a single defining cause.

Neave had been shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland and had advocated military escalation against the IRA. In There Will Be Fire, Carroll draws on his own interviews and original reporting, reveals new information, and weaves together previously unconnected threads. Fortunately for all, the madness and destruction of this period has evolved into diplomatic and political dialogue; long may that continue. A combination of repulsion at the conduct of British soldiers in Belfast, grievance at the sectarian state, and sheer boredom seems to have led him into a life of ‘armed struggle’, as the IRA termed its campaign. Opening with a brilliantly-paced prologue that introduces bomber Patrick Magee in the build up to the incident, Carroll sets out to deftly explore the intrigue before and after the assassination attempt - with the story spanning three continents, from pubs and palaces, safe houses and interrogation rooms, hotels and barracks.