Murder Of A Royal

A documentary marks 40 years since the IRA assassinated Lord Mountbatten

During the Summer of 1979, India Hicks was holidaying in County Sligo, Ireland, with her family and grandfather, Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was an uncle of Prince Philip and a distant cousin of the Queen. He was also Prince Charles’ close mentor.

It was something that Hicks, then aged 11, had done every year. But on 27 August, the family holiday ended in tragedy.

Lord Mountbatten, 79, and several other family members were out on his fishing boat, Shadow V, when an IRA bomb went off. The blast killed four people, including Mountbatten and his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas, Hicks’ closest cousin.

TRAUMATIC

‘For some reason that day I didn’t join them,’ recalls Hicks. ‘I stayed behind, although I heard the bomb go off. For several years afterwards, every time a door or window slammed, I’d jump.