It has been 40 years since Brighton's Grand hotel was in the middle of a bomb plot to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and as many of her cabinet members as possible.

The explosive, which was planted during the Conservative Party Conference, detonated at 2.54am on October 12, 1984 - killing five and leaving several severely injured.

Sir Anthony Berry, who was then MP for Enfield Southgate, is one of the people who died in the incident. His then-wife Sarah was left hospitalised.

Sir Anthony left behind six children and his death would trigger a series of events in their lives that still have an impact today.

The debris caused by the bomb at The Grand hotel (Image: The Argus)

His son, Edward, would lead a quiet and private life holding onto the good memories he has of his father and sharing them with friends and family, with no desire to have contact with IRA murderer Patrick Magee.

The then 24-year-old moved to Regency Square in Brighton near the time of the Conservative Party Conference in 1984.

Edward Berry speaking in a BBC documentary about the Brighton Bomb  (Image: BBC)

“It was by chance that I was there during the conference, which is not something that I would have attended normally,” Edward said. “My father said 'let’s meet for dinner', which was not something we had done often. It was an extraordinary circumstance, and it turned out to be quite a poignant moment.”

“We met in The Grand hotel with my stepmother Sarah and we went out for dinner at English’s and we had a lovely evening. One of the reasons for me it’s particularly poignant is that his circumstances had been a bit rocked, he had a very high moral compass, anyone who knew him, his father was a very strict man and he was the youngest in a very large family.

“He was a very warm man and he believed that things should be done properly, but he had this bad moment where he’d been drink driving, he was not only not proud of it he was devastated by it.”

In September 1984 Sir Anthony Berry was convicted of reckless driving and drink driving.

Edward continued: “When I saw him on October 11 he was much changed, he was much better and many had encouraged him to look forward. He was moving on and in a good place and more comfortable in himself.

“I suppose my last moments with him saying goodbye, he was in much better place and better in himself. It’s a nice memory of him to take forward and to pass on to my siblings and my children and my grandchildren.

“For me this evening is the most extraordinary sort of irony that I have this very nice memory and special evening with him and it was his last.

“I then went back to my apartment, I was called about six or seven in the morning by my sister who asked ‘is dad alright’, and I said ‘I don’t know what you mean’ and she told me that there was a bomb at The Grand hotel.”

Edward went to the Metropolitan hotel, where survivors were taken to. He was then ushered to speak to the police to find out whether his father had been found.

Party members sit around the foyer of the Metropole after they were evacuated from The Grand. (Image: Simon Dack)

Edward continued: “The police had set up their headquarters in front of The Grand, so I went to speak with them and asked if they had my father or stepmother on record.

“The police officer had told me they had one Berry on record and that was Sarah Berry who was taken to Royal Sussex County Hospital.”

“[The police] had to identify one of the bodies they had found, and someone had come up with the idea to use my father’s signet ring as I wore a signet ring too which he had bought for my 21st birthday.  They used it and it was a match.

“They came back and gave us the news we were probably expecting. The reality is everything was busy, I had to go to phone boxes and call people to tell them the news and to plan what was happening next. So the grieving process didn’t occur until later on.”

Jo Berry outside The Grand hotel at the 25th anniversary of the Brighton Bomb  (Image: Kate Howell) Meanwhile, his sister Jo would find herself going down a journey of self-exploration and forgiveness, setting up a peace building charity and meeting with the released bomber hundreds of times since the incident.

She said Sir Anthony was a "wonderful father" and “very much a family man, very private man who loved nothing more than having his six children be with him."

“This whole journey I have been on has been about transforming myself and ending the cycle of violence and revenge, and to understand our inner process of why we blame people, why we stay victims and why we get overwhelmed and how we can transform what’s happened to us into something positive," she told The Argus.

“That’s about having the difficult conversations so that we don’t just stay in disagreement, we don’t shame and blame people but try and understand.”

Magee was handed eight life sentences at the Old Bailey in 1986, with a recommendation he serve a minimum of 35 years.

He was released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

She chose to meet Magee when he was released "to meet him, not to change him, not to tell him that he was evil, but to actually hear his story, see him as a human being.”

Jo Berry with Patrick Magee speaking to the House of Parliament (Image: PA) Jo said: “Pat chose to change the day I met him, he didn’t change because I had told him to.

“I chose to change my response to move on from hurting and letting go of that self-righteousness, I don’t always succeed but it’s about how do I become more empathic. It’s emotional work and it’s difficult.”

“When the bomb went off that changed everything, because now I’m in the real world where people kill and people get killed.

“I almost had to reinvent myself, do I give up on this person that had this dream of peace or do I take that vision and ground it in a different way.

“That’s what I chose to do, try to bring peace to the horror of the bomb and bring something positive out of it.”