Photo journal: Brighton bomb 20 years on

"On the way down, we said 'some idiot has got drunk and let the alarm off'," remembers firefighter Fred Bishop.

They arrived on Brighton sea front to find thick dust "like fog", and a gaping hole in the Grand Hotel.

The night of 12 October 1984 saw the IRA come within a whisker of wiping out Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government, in town for their annual conference.

Here, 20 years on, a handful of those caught up in the bomb and its aftermath, recall the dramatic events.