Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon visited Abbeyleix in 1965.
A new book is imagining the behind closed doors fallout of a Royal Family marriage in the midlands in the 1960s.
"A House in Winter" recounts Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon’s visit to his sister’s home in Abbeyleix in 1965, where local opposition and IRA petrol bomb attacks left them confined to the house without electricity for 48 tense hours.
The novel also discusses an incident after the royal members left, when a mass brawl broke out in Mountmellick courthouse after 10 men were arrested charged with unlawful assembly and damage to property.
Emily Hourican is the author of the novel, she says there was mayhem in the aftermath of the visit:
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