Tributes paid at service to remember Ewart-Biggs

Tributes were paid yesterday to the late British ambassador, Mr Christopher Ewart-Biggs, at a memorial service in St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin to mark the 25th anniversary of his death in an IRA bombing.

Mr Ewart-Biggs and Ms Judith Cooke, a private secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, were killed when a bomb hidden in a culvert blew up the ambassador's car 200 yards outside the gates of his official residence in Sandyford, Co Dublin on July 21st, 1976. He had been ambassador to Ireland for 12 days.

A Permanent Under-Secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, Mr Brian Cubbon, and Mr Brian O'Driscoll, the ambassador's chauffeur, were also badly injured. Mr O'Driscoll, who still works at the embassy, was among those at the service.

The President, Mrs McAleese, led the congregation and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, who represented the Government, read one of the lessons as did the British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Baroness Amos.

The British ambassador, Sir Ivor Roberts, described Mr Ewart-Biggs as a "diplomat of great intellect". The envoy, who had lost an eye in 1942 at the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt, wrote novels under the pseudonym Charles Elliott, one of which "was banned in France and Ireland as being too sexually explicit".

Sir Ivor said: "If the last 30 years have taught us anything, down the miserable catalogue of 3,000 lost lives . . . it is that the physical force tradition which has so infected life on this island and on that day, 25 years ago, cast such a deep shadow over British and Irish relations, has been shown to have run its course. And we have heard welcome if belated recognition of that from the leadership of the republican movement."

The late ambassador's wife, Lady Ewart-Biggs, who died in 1992, set up an annual literary prize in his memory and a community prize. The service was led by the Rev Charles Mullen, the Dean's vicar, while the dean of the Cathedral, the Very Rev Robert MacCarthy, gave the blessing. Bishop Jim Moriarty represented the Catholic hierarchy and the Rev Donaldson Rogers represented the Methodist Church in Ireland.