For those of us of a certain age (62, since you ask), the extraordinary events of 5 May 1980 will remain indelibly etched on our memories. No, I’m not talking about the final of the Embassy World Snooker Championship, but the SAS’s storming of the Iranian embassy in London that suddenly interrupted the BBC’s coverage of that battle in Sheffield.
Few people had heard of the SAS (Special Air Service) before they explosively ended the six-day siege by six gunmen who had taken captive 26 hostages, including four Britons. But on that bank holiday evening on live TV a transfixed nation watched these mysterious figures dressed in black and wearing balaclavas smash their way into the embassy in Princes Gate.
