Bombing Brighton: The Plot to Kill Thatcher is a documentary with a gap in the middle. Its main interviewee is the Brighton bomber himself, Patrick Magee, who in 1984 placed an explosive device in the Grand hotel, timed to explode during the Conservative party conference. It did so in the early hours of 12 October, killing five people. How did Magee choose where to place it? Where was it hidden? How did he know it wouldn’t be found?
Magee simply refuses to answer these questions, even though many of the facts are known: “I won’t talk at all about any of the operational detail.” But Guy King’s film has knottier issues to deal with. It considers how we view violence in asymmetric conflicts and how we can move past it. As for the personalities involved, Magee proves to be fascinating, but this is more a study of the bombing’s target than its perpetrator.
