A new BBC documentary marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Lord Mountbatten when a bomb was detonated on board his fishing boat in Mullaghmore and 15-year-old Paul Maxwell from Fermanagh was killed, will seek to retell the events of that day on Monday night.

The Day Mountbatten Died, to be broadcast on BBC one and BBC Two at 9pm and will feature interviews with Lord Mountbatten’s granddaughter India Hicks, who was holidaying with her grandfather and family at Classiebawn Castle at Mullaghmore, County Sligo that summer and Mary Hornsey, from Fermanagh, who was on holiday in the area with her family at the time.

The documentary also hears from locals from the village who were involved with the rescue operation, some of those who witnessed the explosion, and the Garda Protection Officer assigned to Lord Mountbatten and his family that summer.

Also interviewed in the film are Anthony McIntyre, a former member of the IRA, who was in prison at the time of the assassination and Kieran Conway, who gathered intelligence for the IRA, and who talk about the IRA’s operations at that time.

The one-hour documentary reveals for the first time that an earlier attempt on Lord Mountbatten’s life had been planned four years before his eventual assassination.

India Hicks describes how the family is still struggling to come to terms with the tragic loss of that day.

She says: “Everybody coped very differently… and some didn’t cope well and of course we’re seeing the side effects of that, even to this day, and the damage that was done was so much deeper than any of us could ever have imagined and adult lives are still being horrifically disrupted.”