The brutally theatrical world of Irish terrorism
“When Dan was eighteen a man he didn’t know drove him across the border.” English writer Jonathan Lee’s tautly written account of the bombing of Brighton’s Grand Hotel opens on the day in1978 that a Belfast teenager is initiated into the brutally theatrical world of Irish terrorism. Six years on, British PM Margaret Thatcher has become the group’s intended target.
Both perpetrators and victims spring to life in the tale that unfolds. Labelled a “distance man” by commanders, Dan sets explosions, but is nowhere near when hell breaks loose. As the Brighton bombing looms, Dan remains every bit the distance man. “Timed in the night, to limit losses?” he plaintively asks his bosses.
Against cynical Belfast, Lee pits “Brighton’s breezy, straight and safe-seeming streets.” A father-daughter duo assumes centre stage: Philip “Moose” Finch, the Grand’s deputy manager, and 18-year-old Freya Finch, a summer receptionist.
Both father and daughter are charming, funny — and innocent. Freya agrees to allow her leftie friends into the hotel to protest Thatcher’s policies, then changes her mind; desperate for a boyfriend, she chooses the wrong boy. When a handsome stranger calling himself Roy Walsh — really Dan — checks in, Freya feels attracted to this man “who didn’t come from a world of corduroy and borrowed novels . . . who looked bracingly awake.” Their flirting seems easy, natural.
For a moment or two, before we get sucked back into his tale’s swirling depths, Lee lets us imagine how things might have taken a different turn for these two, in a different world, one not riven by hatred, cynicism and cunning. Nancy Wigston is a freelance writer in Toronto.