BBC NEWS | UK | ‘Ordinary’ lives of bomb suspects

My God, they came from an ordinary British city, they were ordinary British subjects. But then Timothy McVeigh and Ted “Unabomber” Kaczynski were ordinary people from ordinary places. What made them become extraordinary? The British will be debating the root causes of these attacks – whether it’s religious mania, hatred of “people not like us,” alienation, mental illness, and so on. Just as we did with our home-grown “mad bombers” – and we’ve never found the answers, either.

My husband David and I have been to Leeds, and we’ve taken the train between there and King’s Cross. So when I read the latest news, I picture the train station at Leeds and the terminus where the line ends in London, and the banality of our routine travel that day seems very strange by comparison.