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In 1984 an IRA bomb planted under a bath in Brighton's Grand Hotel came close to killing Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Five people died and 31 others were seriously injured. Belfast writer Glenn Patterson tells the story of the deadly attack, unravelling the threads that brought all involved - often by heartbreaking chance - to that place and time, 2.54am on the morning of 12 October, and reveals how the police only just averted a follow-up bombing campaign aimed at England's beaches.

When you get right down to it, everything in life is a matter of timing...

It is the night of 17 September 1984. The guest in room 629 of Brighton's Grand Hotel has ordered a bottle of vodka and three cokes. It seems he is having a small party.

A few minutes before, the guest - who signed in two days ago as Roy Walsh - put the panel back on the side of the bath in 629's en suite.

Behind that panel he has left a bomb, timed to go off in three weeks, three days, six hours and thirty-six minutes, at 2.54am on Friday 12 October. The day of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton.

And the Prime Minister and all her cabinet, as this man who calls himself Roy Walsh knows, will be staying in the Grand Hotel.

It is the biggest direct assault on a British Government since the Gunpowder Plot.

And in the bomber's mind, it's only the start.

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