‘You don’t see the trauma until suddenly you do’: Lockerbie bombing’s lasting impact on a ‘normal little town’

Libby Brooks - TheGuardian - 16/02
Ongoing trials, documentaries and dramatisations mean the Scottish town remains in the spotlight, willingly or not

At the end of a row of tidy red brick bungalows in the Scottish town of Lockerbie is an empty plot, carefully landscaped now as a memorial garden. Two red tartan ribbons, tied on a leafless branch perhaps in private remembrance, flutter in a wintry gust.

Eleven of the street’s residents died when the wing section of Pan Am 103 crashed into Sherwood Crescent with the force of a meteorite on 21 December 1988, gouging a 30-foot crater on this spot. The impact was such that some bodies were never recovered.

This once anonymous street was recreated in meticulous detail for the filming of the Sky Atlantic series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, which was first screened last month and stars Oscar winner Colin Firth as Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed when a bomb exploded on the Pan Am flight from London bound for New York.

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Garden of Remembrance is located at Sherwood Crescent – where 11 residents died. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/...
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