My father's watch

by Patrick Maguire

The intensely moving memoir of Patrick Maguire, one of the ‘Maguire Seven’ wrongly imprisoned as a teenager for making bombs for the IRA.On the night of October 5 1974, an IRA unit left bombs in two Guildford pubs: five people were killed. On the night of December 3 1974, on the strength of fabricated testimony extracted under duress from Paul Hill and Gerard Conlon (whom the police mistakenly believed had planted the Guildford bombs), Anne and Paddy Maguire, two of their four children, Vincent and Patrick, plus other family members and friends, a total of seven in all, were arrested at their home in West London. On 22 October 1975 the Guildford Four were wrongfully convicted of bombing the two pubs in Guildford. On the 4 March 1976 the Maguire Seven, as they had become known, were found guilty of possession of the nitro-glycerine used in those bombings.On 19 October 1989 the verdicts on the Guildford Four were quashed. On 26 June 1991 the convictions against the Maguire Seven of handl