Early one January morning in 1984, on the day before Robert Carswell was due to be sworn in as a High Court judge in Northern Ireland, he got down on his knees to check beneath his car and found a bomb.
He rushed his wife and two teenage daughters out of their home near Stormont in East Belfast. The bomb disposal squad conducted a controlled explosion. Even that was enough to create a large crater in the drive and extensively damage the ground floor. His wife, Romayne, was deeply shocked by the Provisional IRA’s attempt to kill her husband, but Carswell was undeterred.
A dutiful and conscientious man, he went on to serve for the next 20 years as a High Court judge, Appeal Court