Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900-79) 

On the 27^th August 1979: The IRA Murdered Lord Louis Mountbatten. The Queen's cousin, was killed by a bomb blast on his boat in Ireland.

One of the Earl's twin grandsons, Nicholas, 14, and Paul Maxwell, 15, a local employed as a boat boy, also died in the explosion.

The IRA has said it planted the device.

A statement from the terrorists said: "This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country."

Lord Mountbatten and his family had been spending a holiday at his castle in County Sligo, north west of Ireland. They were aboard his boat, Shadow V, which had just set off from the fishing village of Mullaghmore, when the bomb detonated around 11.30 am

A witness said the blast blew the boat "to smithereens" and hurled all seven occupants into the water. Nearby fishermen raced to the rescue and pulled Lord Mountbatten out of the water. But his legs had been almost severed by the explosion and he died shortly afterwards. Other survivors were pulled out of the water and rushed to hospital. At least one person is believed to be in a critical condition. The attack has called into question the security arrangements surrounding the Mountbatten party.

The local police kept watch on Classybawn castle for the one month a year Lord Mountbatten spent there. But his boat was left unguarded in the public dock in Mullaghmore where it was moored. The village is only twelve miles from the Northern Ireland border and near an area known to be used by IRA members as a refuge.

Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900-79) was perhaps the last great court politician of modern Europe. For over thirty years he played a major role in British global strategy and domestic statecraft, leaving his mark on matters as diverse as the partition of India, defence policy in the Cold War, the development of atomic weapons, and immigration from the Commonwealth. At the same time he occupied a unique place in British political culture in the middle decades of the twentieth century as unofficial Cabinet adviser, imperial trouble-shooter, eminence grise to the Windsor's, and the lynchpin of what was left of the royal families of Europe.