Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Daughter of IRA victim’s ‘epiphany’ at meeting
THE daughter of a Conservative MP killed by an IRA bomb has written about the “epiphany” moment when a man convicted of the blast “stopped justifying” his actions.
Jo Berry and Patrick Magee struck up an unusual friendship over 20 years of dialogue after the bomb attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
Her father Sir Anthony Berry was one of five people killed in the 1984 blast targeting then prime minister Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party conference.
Writing in a foreword to Magee’s memoir Where Grieving Begins: Building Bridges After The Brighton Bomb, Ms Berry described it as both an “honour and a challenge”.
Recalling their first meeting, she wrote she knew he would come with a “sense of righteousness”, but said an “epiphany moment” happened.
She added: “He was no longer justifying.
“He was speaking from his heart, being vulnerable and asking me about my father.”
A MAN who found a naval mine on a local beach and rolled it home to use as a quirky footstool has been forced to hand it over.
Joe Gray, 43, spotted the massive device on rocks and it became part of the furniture at his home.
He had been told by the Government’s Receiver of Wreck team he could keep it if it was unclaimed.
But the Royal Navy visited him in Penzance, Cornwall, to take it.
Coastguards had told Joe, who runs reclamation yard Shiver Me Timbers, it was non-explosive and had been used in training.
He said: “I’d been on the hunt for a mine. As soon as I heard one had washed up, I was so excited.
“It was a thrilling find – but I’ll just have to hope another one washes up.”