Returning from London, where my parents had lived for seventeen years, my family were in Ireland only a couple of years when the bombing of eighteen soldiers took place at Narrow Water, near Warrenpoint, a few miles from where we lived – and where I still live - in Dundalk. I don’t remember this terrible event, which occurred on August 27 th 1979. Most of the press attention at the time went to another IRA atrocity that had taken place on the same day: the bombing of a boat in Mullaghmore, Sligo, which killed its passengers – Earl Mountbatten and two crew members. I do remember that event being on the news. The death of the 18 soldiers was pretty much overshadowed at the time by the death of a British royal. It is the Narrow Water atrocity that forms the backdrop to my play, The Naturalists , which is about to receive its world premiere in New York, presented by the Pond Theatre Company. According to Tim Pat Coogan, the Narrow Wate...
The blog of writer, Jaki McCarrick.