From a Clear Blue Sky: Surviving the Mountbatten Bomb By Timothy Knatchbull, Hutchinson, £13.99

It could not have been easy for Timothy Knatchbull to write a book like this. Knatchbull’s book, after all, recounts “the echoes of that day” — Monday, August 27, 1979 — when the Irish Republican Army exploded a bomb on a boat carrying Timothy and some of his family members. Timothy and his parents were grievously injured in the attack, but they survived. However, Timothy’s grandfather (Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India and a member of the royal family), his grandmother and his twin were killed along with another teenager. Timothy’s twin was 14 years old. His name was Nicholas.

It would be unfair to interpret From a Clear Blue Sky simply as a literary reconstruction of a gruesome act of terror. It is actually a brave attempt on the part of a survivor at piecing together the fragments of a tragedy, to confront, and come to terms with, the loss of his loved ones. Nonetheless, as a work of literature, it suffers from certain crucial flaws that cannot be overlooked.

Lord Mountbatten, in spite of his brief appearance, is undoubtedly one of the central characters of the book. Given Knatchbull’s closeness to his grandfather, readers would have expected him to add to their knowledge of the man who is considered to be a significant figure at a time when the Empire was crumbling in many parts of the world. We are told that Mountbatten was a caring family man, that he was a disciplinarian, and was fond of toys and of telling stories to his grandchildren. Beyond these snippets, we get to know very little about how his personal life differed from his public persona. Mountbatten’s relationship with his Irish employees at Classiebawn — a turreted Victorian manor house in County Sligo, where Mountbatten and his family went for their holidays — could have been dwelt on more extensively. It is also possible that readers will react more strongly to Nicholas’s death than to Mountbatten’s. The brothers had been inseparable from birth, and Knatchbull’s account of his initial shock and grudging acceptance of Nick’s absence is moving without being maudlin.

Knatchbull’s book cannot be considered as a comprehensive account of a particularly troubled period in Ireland’s history. To be fair to Knatchbull, he does attempt to answer questions related to the troubles towards the end of the book, but his efforts are not enough to plug the gaps that are likely to occur in a layman’s understanding of the IRA, its violent agenda, and the factors that led to its creation. One possible reason for this is that Knatchbull’s return to Sligo in 2003-04 was informed by a cathartic intent. His journeys were attempts to take on the ghosts of a painful past. The trips were certainly not aimed at a causal reconstruction of a momentous event. The pace of the novel, especially in the early chapters, is grindingly slow, and is hampered by too much detail.

As a piece of investigative journalism, Knatchbull’s work raises more questions than it chooses to answer. The central question, the probable reason behind the IRA’s plot against Mountbatten, continues to niggle till the very end. Yes, Mountbatten was a possible target because of his elevated political status. But Knatchbull would have us believe that although Mountbatten kept himself away from the intricacies of Irish politics, he sympathized deeply with Irish nationalism. Why did the IRA then decide to do away with him? Was it merely a ploy to draw attention to its cause? The slips in Mountbatten’s security are alluded to, and there is even the dark hint of a possible mole, but Knatchbull chooses to leave these tantalizing leads largely unexplored. One is also left wondering why the British government allowed Mountbatten to continue with his risky holidays. Was he then simply a pawn in the dangerous game between the British government and the Irish separatists?

The book succeeds, when it does, because of Knatchbull’s unflinchingly personal tone. The reader has no difficulty in identifying with Knatchbull’s inner battle to come to terms with the loss of his twin. In one poignant moment, out of many, Knatchbull narrates how, years later during one of his return trips, he stood looking into the mirror in a Dublin hotel, only to rediscover the facial similarities he shared with his dead brother. That very day, he had been shown a photograph of Nicholas’s lifeless body. As he stared at the glass that caught his reflection, Timothy began to cry. But that solitary moment in an Irish hotel also made Timothy realize that the tears did not signify the reopening of an old wound. They were merely the first signs that the scars he carried within were beginning to heal.