Sligo: Britain’s Prince Charles, Prince of Wales waves during a visit to the Institute of Technology on Wednesday.—AFP

MULLAGHMORE: Britain’s Prince Charles on Wednesday spoke of his “anguish” at the murder of his godfather by IRA paramilitaries in 1979 as he became the first royal to visit the assassination site in Ireland.

Charles remembered Lord Louis Mountbatten as “the grandfather I never had” on an emotional trip to the rugged coastline, saying he understood the suffering of the Irish people in “a profound way”.

The British Union Jack flag and the Irish tricolour flew side by side on the main street in Mullaghmore, the seaside village from where Mountbatten and his family set off on a boat which was later blown up by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb.

Under an overcast sky, Charles and his wife Camilla toured the site under heavy security as boats patrolled the bay and a helicopter hovered overhead.

“At the time I could not imagine how we would come to terms with the anguish of such a deep loss,” Charles told an audience in the nearby town of Sligo before the visit.

“Through this dreadful experience I now understand in a profound way the agonies borne by others on these islands of whatever faith or political persuasion.” Mountbatten, Charles’ great-uncle, his mother Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin and the last viceroy of British-ruled India, was 79 when he was killed.

Published in Dawn, May 21st, 2015

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