The Crown's opening episode looks at the tragic deaths of Lord Mountbatten, his son-in-law's mother Dowager Lady Brabourne, his grandson Nicholas Knatchbull and a crew member Paul Maxwell in a boat explosion orchestrated by the IRA in 1978.
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Nicholas, 14, was tragically killed in the explosion, while his twin brother Timothy survived. In 2010, he spoke about the attack that killed three of his close family members in his book From a Clue Blue Sky: Surviving the Mountbatten bomb.
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In an interview on his website, Timothy opened up about losing his twin brother when they were teenagers, and the profound impact it had on his life.
Charles Dance plays Lord Mountbatten in The Crown
He wrote: "The bomb left me with a legacy of mental and emotional wounds that refused to go away. After more than 20 years I decided to heal myself. For over a year I returned to Ireland in a series of private visits and underwent a vital process which allowed me to say goodbye to Nicholas, my identical twin who died in the explosion and discover a path in which I could forgive.
"This journey motivated me to share my story with others who may also have suffered trauma or grief."
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Speaking about his memories of the attack, he added: "My family and I were relaxed and happy going out onto a flat calm sea in my grandfather’s fishing boat. My memories are intensely clear in short bursts. I remember climbing onto the roof of the cabin and talking to my grandfather who was steering.
Timothy Knatchbull with Prince Charles and Camilla
"I have a distant memory of the sound of the explosion and of a very violent sensation and then nothing. Until a minute or two later lying in a boat and hearing anxious Irish voices talking at me. I felt intensely cold and knew that something was awfully wrong with me yet I didn’t quite know what it was. Another snatched memory of being put into the ambulance and seeing my father, and then later waking up in hospital."
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