1. Christopher Ewart-Biggs was killed in 1976 by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Sandyford, Dublin.
10 Facts About Christopher Ewart-Biggs
1. 2.
Christopher Thomas Ewart-Biggs was born in the Thanet district of Kent, England, to Captain Henry Ewart-Biggs of the Royal Engineers and his wife Mollie Brice.
3.
Christopher Ewart-Biggs was educated at Wellington College and University College, Oxford, and served in the Royal West Kent Regiment of the British Army during the Second World War.
4.
Christopher Ewart-Biggs spent the rest of the war and after as political officer in Jefren, Tripolitania, where he learned fluent Italian and some Arabic.
5.
Christopher Ewart-Biggs remarried Jane Randall on 5 May 1960.
6.
Christopher Ewart-Biggs was killed on 21 July 1976, at age 54, when his armoured Jaguar car, part of a four-vehicle convoy on its way to the British Embassy in Dublin, was thrown into the air by a land mine planted by the IRA.
7.
Christopher Ewart-Biggs had been taking precautions to avoid such an incident since coming to Dublin only two weeks before.
8.
Christopher Ewart-Biggs chose right, and, 317 yards down the road, the IRA remotely detonated 200 pounds of explosives hidden under a culvert.
9.
Republicans suggested Christopher Ewart-Biggs was targeted because of his intelligence connections though possibly Cubbon was the intended target.
10.
Christopher Ewart-Biggs was to travel to the Republic to consult with the ambassador and Irish ministers, but postponed his trip after Margaret Thatcher refused to allow Northern Ireland ministers to pair their votes in House of Commons divisions.