Christopher Ewart-Biggs

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Christopher Ewart-Biggs (died July 21, 1976) was the British Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland and an author. He was killed by the Provisional IRA in Sandyford, Dublin. His widow, (the late) Jane Ewart-Biggs, campaigned to improve Anglo-Irish relations.

Ewart-Biggs was educated at Wellington College and University College, Oxford. He served in the British Army in WWII. At the battle of El Alamein in 1942 he lost his right eye, the artificial copy of which he wore a smoked-glass monocle over. Also, as a British consul in Algiers in 1961 (before the French withdrawal), he had been a potential target for assassination by diehard French colonialists.

Ewart-Biggs was 54 when he was killed by a landmine planted by the IRA. He had taken previous precautions to avoid such an incident since coming to Dublin only two weeks before the incident (eg: varying his route many times a week), but due to a vulnerable spot on the road connecting his residence to the main road, at one point had only the choice between left or right. He chose right, and approximately 150 yards from the residence, hit a landmine (said to contain hundreds of pounds of explosives). Ewart-Biggs and fellow passenger and civil servant Judith Cooke (aged 26) were killed. Driver Brian O'Driscoll and third passenger Brian Cubbon (aged 57), the highest-ranking civil servant in Northern Ireland at the time) were injured.

Dublin launched a man-hunt involving 4,000 Gardai, half the country's police force, and 2,000 soldiers. Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave declared that "this atrocity fills all decent Irish people with a sense of shame." In London, Prime Minister James Callaghan condemned the assassins as a "common enemy whom we must destroy or be destroyed by [1]." Thirteen suspected members of the IRA were arrested during raids as the British and Irish governments attempted to apprehend the killers. No-one was ever apprehended for the murders.

The Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize was founded in his honour.