On the evening of 21 December 1988, Jim and Jane Swire were preparing for Christmas in the warm glow of their home in the sleepy Worcestershire village of Finstall. They had just waved goodbye to their 23-year-old daughter Flora, who was jetting off to New York to visit her boyfriend for the holidays. Shortly after 7pm, a newsflash appeared on the Swires’ television, announcing that a plane had gone down over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. From that point on, their lives were never the same again.
Flora was one of 270 people killed in what remains, to this day, the deadliest terror attack ever to have taken place in Britain. Thirty-eight minutes after Pan Am flight 103 took off from Heathrow on its journey to New York, a bomb on board exploded, killing every passenger and crew member as well as 11 people on the ground below.
