Grand Hotel Brighton bombing: Remembering the attack 40 years on

The Irish Republican Army planted a bomb in room 629 of the Grand Hotel which was hosting the Conservative Party Conference. The bomb was hidden under the bathtub and was set to detonate at 2.54am on October 12, 1984, the day of Thatcher's speech. The force of the blast broke through the roof and dislodged a five-ton chimney stack, which crashed through multiple floors. The explosion killed five people and injured 34 others.

Patrick Magee, an IRA volunteer, planted the bomb and was tried and convicted in 1986. He was sentenced to eight life sentences, but was released in 1999 as part of the Good Friday Agreement. The bombing was called "the most audacious attack on a British government since the Gunpowder Plot".

The bombing was a key moment in the Troubles, the conflict in Northern Ireland between unionists and republicans over the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. However it was not the first terrorist incident to take place in the south or the first time the IRA had targeted this part of the county.

Other notable incidents in Hampshire and Sussex include the Aldershot bombing of February 22 1972 when the IRA detonated a car bomb at Aldershot British Army base and killed seven civilian staff; the explosion of an IRA bomb in East Street in Southampton on December 17 1978; the assassination of Eastbourne MP Ian Gow on July 30 1990 by the IRA when a booby trap bomb exploded under his car outside his home; and the Bognor Regis bombing when 2.5 lbs of Semtex packed into a bicycle was left outside Woolworths and exploded damaging 15 shops on 13 August 1994. A similar bomb found in nearby Brighton;

Here are pictures showing the devastation from the Brighton bombing 40 years ago: