Powell's book, Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland, also reveals:

· Blair offered a secret deal to Adams during the 1998 Good Friday agreement to release IRA prisoners after one year. In public Blair only offered to release them after two years.

· Powell held a series of secret meetings with the Sinn Féin leaders Martin McGuinness and Adams, often being driven around by republicans on lengthy detours to republican safe houses in the predominantly Catholic Derry to avoid detection.

· Blair redrafted an IRA statement at Ch...

Powell's book, Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland, also reveals:

· Blair offered a secret deal to Adams during the 1998 Good Friday agreement to release IRA prisoners after one year. In public Blair only offered to release them after two years.

· Powell held a series of secret meetings with the Sinn Féin leaders Martin McGuinness and Adams, often being driven around by republicans on lengthy detours to republican safe houses in the predominantly Catholic Derry to avoid detection.

· Blair redrafted an IRA statement at Chequers in the presence of Adams in 2003 and Powell regularly drafted Sinn Féin statements.

· Blair was prepared to have a showdown with the British army over its initial refusal to remove watchtowers from the strongly republican South Armagh. The head of the army in Northern Ireland threatened to resign, though an agreement was eventually reached.

· The identity of the key IRA leader who decided republicans should disarm. Powell declares there would have been no peace deal without the agreement of Brian Keenan, described by Powell as "the biggest single threat to the British state" when he ran the IRA's British bombing campaign.

· Adams and McGuinness told Powell and Blair on several occasions that the IRA needed to hold on to its arms because they were under threat from the dissident Real IRA.

Now for a laugh after all that serious stuff.

Kelly meets Ralph Lauren

On May 6 1999 an unlikely encounter took place in Downing Street:

While we were meeting the parties downstairs at No 10, Cherie Blair was showing fashion designer Ralph Lauren around upstairs. They ran into Martin McGuinness in the white room, and he in turn introduced Lauren to Gerry Kelly (notorious for his dapper turnout) and made a great show of asking for an assessment of Kelly's matching grey and beige outfit. Adams and McGuinness themselves always opted for a version of smart-casual we called "terrorist chic".

The day McGuinness f[b]...

Now for a laugh after all that serious stuff.

Kelly meets Ralph Lauren

On May 6 1999 an unlikely encounter took place in Downing Street:

While we were meeting the parties downstairs at No 10, Cherie Blair was showing fashion designer Ralph Lauren around upstairs. They ran into Martin McGuinness in the white room, and he in turn introduced Lauren to Gerry Kelly (notorious for his dapper turnout) and made a great show of asking for an assessment of Kelly's matching grey and beige outfit. Adams and McGuinness themselves always opted for a version of smart-casual we called "terrorist chic".

The day McGuinness fixed my watch

On Monday September 13 [2004] I went over to the Clonard monastery [in west Belfast] for one last meeting before [negotiations at] Leeds castle. The Catholic priests were very kind and even gave us dinner in the refectory. It was a bit odd sitting there with Adams, McGuinness and their team eating monastic food.
McGuinness noticed that I was worrying away at my watch. The minute hand had come loose and I was afraid I would miss my flight back. He said there was a watchmaker at the end of his street in Derry who could fix it. I tried to resist, saying it would be too much trouble, but he insisted and I gave it to him, having visions of getting it back with a listening device or a beacon in it.

He brought it back to me at Leeds Castle and promised, on his word of honour, that it had not been bugged. I gave it the next day to the security people and they dismantled it but could find nothing untoward. Unfortunately, they succeeded in loosening the minute hand again and I had to take the watch to a very expensive watch shop in London to be repaired again

· Extracted from Great Hatred, Little Room by

McGuinness probably had bomb-ma