A hard-hitting letter from Prince Philip slamming the IRA after they executed Lord Louis Mountbatten has emerged 46 years on. The grieving Royal said it would have been easier to stomach the loss of his uncle had it been 'an accident or an act of God'. But his murder by the Provisional IRA who planted a bomb on his fishing boat made him 'so bitter'. Writing two days after the assassination, Philip said he resented the fact the IRA 'considered themselves to be civilised human beings'. He added that he hoped Mountbatten's assassination would 'jerk a little bit of sanity back into these people'.
Philip made the forceful remarks while responding to a letter of condolence from a friend named Richard on August 29, 1979, just two days after Mountbatten was murdered. The two page handwritten letter, on Windsor Castle letterhead and signed 'Philip', reads: "Thank you very much for your kind letter. This whole ghastly business might have been easier to hear if it had been an accident or an ‘act of God,’ what makes it so bitter is that it was deliberately perpetrated by some people who probably consider themselves to be civilized human beings.
"One can only pray that this shock may help to jerk a little sanity back into these people." Mountbatten, the great wartime naval commander, had been fishing at Mullaghmore, County Sligo, with his family when a radio-controlled bomb attached to the boat the previous night was detonated from shore.
He was pulled alive from the water by nearby fishermen, but died from his injuries before being brought to shore. His 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull was also killed as was Nicholas's grandmother Doreen Knatchball and Paul Maxwell, a teenage boy from Enniskillen who served as crew.
