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Dr Maurice Hayes was a senior civil servant throughout some key periods in Northern Ireland's Troubles. Here he describes the efforts of the Civil Service to keep the administration of Northern Ireland running during some extremely violent and politically unstable times. He described his shock and disappointment at the introduction of internment, his near despair after Bloody Sunday, for which he believes the British Government must ultimately bear the major responsibility, and in fascinating detail the Sunningdate negotiations, the Power sharing Executive in 1974 and the UWC strike. He paints vivid portraits of some of the key figures of the last 40 years here, including Northern Ireland's first Secretary of State William Whitelaw and his Labour successor Merlyn Rees, SDLP leaders Gerry Fitt and John Hume, Unionist premier Brian Faulkner and individuals such as Paddy Devlin, also of the SDLP.
