Despite its simplicity, there was always the risk of misunderstandings. Duddy, concludes Taylor, “was occasionally prone to a degree of exaggeration”. At key moments, it was unclear whether McGuinness was speaking with the authority of the IRA’s decision-making body, the army council. There would always be those on both sides of the Irish Sea who believed that no spoon was long enough to sup with the IRA. But the reception that Mayhew received suggests that political and public opinion was by then at least in line with the government – and quite possibly ahead of it – in believing it was time to talk about peace. Ambiguous phrases were very much the currency we were involved with,” one of the MI6 officers, Michael Oatley, tells Taylor. The point, he adds, was to encourage the IRA to believe that its aspiration of a united Ireland might be possible through peaceful means and that the British government could help.

Big Night of Musicals 2023 By the National Lottery Big Night of Musicals 2023 by the National Lottery 7.50pm, BBC One On the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Peter Taylor tells for the first time the gripping story of Operation Chiffon, the top-secret intelligence operation that helped bring peace to Ireland. Chiffon’s mission was to get the IRA to end its violent campaign and embrace the political process that eventually led to the historic Good Friday Agreement 25 years ago. Taylor is the doyen of authorities on Northern Ireland, having spent fifty years reporting on the Province. Trusted by all sides in the conflict as an objective journalist, Taylor succeeded in gaining an entrée into each sectarian camp, acquiring unique access to leading political and paramilitary figures. With such impeccable sources, Taylor’s oeuvre has been rich and unique. In addition to five works on Irish and international terrorism, Taylor is author of the critically acclaimed Ulster trilogy Brits , Provos and Loyalists . Notably, Operation Chiffon closes the circle on this series of monographs, concomitantly filling a lacuna in the history of Northern Irish affairs. The role of secret intelligence, as Sir Alexander Cadogan (one-time Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office) complained, was the “missing dimension of most diplomatic history ”. Tellingly, it was the absence of official documentation, interviews or public disclosure surrounding Operation Chiffon that compelled “Robert ”, despite the restraints of the Official Secrets Act, to tell his story. As he confessed to the author, “I’d like what I did to be remembered. ”Women’s Super League Football: Tottenham v Arsenal, 2pm,Sky Sports Main Event At Brisbane Road. Followed by Man United v West Ham at 5pm. Premiership Rugby Union: Saracens v Harlequins, 2.30pm, ITV1/BT Sport 1 At Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. London Irish v Northampton Saints is at 5.15pm on BT Sport 1.

The same year Sinn Fein published minutes of the meeting, compiled by Mr Kelly, which revealed the spy said: “The final solution is union… this island will be as one.” c entur y UK Joint doctrine counsels military leaders to overcome such cultural illiteracy through “cultural awarenes s” and “cultural expertise ”. The former is defined as being “critical to understanding, requiring us to develop cultural expertise in are as where we are likely to operate, together with more general awareness of other culture s” . The latter “requires immersion in another’s culture and generally develops in concert with the ability to speak the language and to understand the mindset ”. As the historiography of “the Trouble s” makes clear, the British signally failed to observe these best practices between 1969 and 2 007. By that time, however, McGuinness had passed a historic message to Robert, via Duddy, in which he said: “The conflict is over, but we need your advice on how to bring it to a close.”Taylor recounts how Oatley readily admitted his rule-breaking to his political masters: it was, Oatley said, “very naughty of me”, but he was less than a week from retirement. When the second infraction was discovered, Robert felt obliged to resign from MI5. Operation Chiffon, as the communications came to be known on the British side, also chronicles the extraordinary risks that the go-betweens sometimes took, and the ways in which they frequently redoubled their efforts to achieve peace through dialogue at those times when the carnage was at its most unspeakable and their chances of success seemed most remote. The hard-scrabble existence of Maltese fishermen is portrayed with dignity and pathos in Alex Camilleri’s neo-realist drama. Non-actor Jesmark Scicluna plays a part close to his real life – the introverted owner of a small fishing boat, a luzzu, who is finding it difficult to make ends meet and support his wife and baby boy. Easy money is to be had from working for a fishery involved in illegal catches, or from EU incentives to give up his boat and his livelihood, but abandoning the traditional ways handed down from father to son breaks his heart. Touching and tragic. SW Live sport For their part, the British, while stressing that there could be no withdrawal without the consent of the majority of people in Northern Ireland, would use deliberately vague language. They told the IRA that they were prepared to discuss “structures of disengagement”, for example, while withholding their reservations about the century in which they believed that might happen. Nobody could foresee that 23 years later the train would hit the buffers of Brexit In light of how high the human and political stakes were , it is unsurprising to discover that Operation Chiffon is a compelling, exhilarating historical account. A significant journalistic “scoop” for the author, it is also an authoritative, scholarly, insightful and balanced treatment of one of the most extraordinary intelligence cases of modern times. Setting the operation and its antecedents in their proper historical context, Taylor supplies his readership with a kaleidoscope of detail, vignettes and personal recollections pertaining to the epoch in question.

A gripping exploration of how MI5 and MI6 worked for a ceasefire with the IRA – and how one meeting changed everything' TelegraphThe exuberant quiz that takes place on a gigantic lazy susan wraps up its current run with another trio of contestants hoping to win big cash. Among the six celebrities offering counsel between bouts of chair-dancing is a strapping dude who knows a thing or two about wheels: Sir Chris Hoy. Graeme Virtue These talks were often at an impasse. The British wanted the IRA to end its violence before they would commence direct negotiations; the IRA knew that without its bullets and bombs, it had very little with which to bargain. Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator in the Northern Ireland peace process, in 1998. Photograph: Gerry Penny/AFP/Getty Images Logan Roy himself – Brian Cox – joins Ross this weekend. Also in the studio: Murder Mystery 2 stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, Taskmaster’s Greg Davies, Ruth Wilson (set to star in the Young Vic’s 24-hour show The Second Woman) and Mercury prize winner Arlo Parks. HR Film choice The Irish have an old saying that “When the big man falls in battle, the fight rarely continue s.” As the IRA was never defeated militarily, it is perhaps unsurprising that the peace and stability of Northern Ireland are still threatened by dissident republicans determined to achieve a united Ireland through force of arms. Pivotal to the story of Operation Chiffon was the promise “Robert” made to the IRA’s high command: “The final solution [to your ‘armed struggle’] is union. It is going to happen anyway. The historical train — Europe — determines that. We are committed to Europe. Unionists will have to change. This island will be as one. ” Ireland is still divided , and Brexit derailed the “historical train” of European integration with the UK, ensuring that the Belfast Agreement can be viewed, twenty-five years on, not as a denouement to “the Trouble s” , but rather as a crucial punctuation mark in the history of contemporary Ireland.