It is necessary to confront the murderous career of Martin McGuinness

SIR – Those who remember Martin McGuinness (report, March 22) as the bringer of peace forget that if he had not perpetrated hostilities he would not have had to negotiate their end. Eric Marsh Hathersage, Derbyshire SIR – The obituary for Martin McGuinness took almost 18 minutes of the BBC News at Ten on Tuesday night. This apologist for the murderous IRA looked to peace only when it suited his own ambition, and it shames our national broadcaster to provide such a eulogy to this poisonous individual. Peter Taylor Sheffield, South Yorkshire SIR – Martin McGuinness’s death produced long tributes on the BBC to his role as a peacemaker. There was no attempt to balance them with an account of his career as a terrorist.

The toll of death and destruction is recorded dispassionately in Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston, published in 2001. In 1972 nine innocent people were killed in the village of Claudy by one of his close associates. In 1985 he authorised the murder of a Catholic couple who were alleged to have informed on the IRA; they left an orphaned daughter.

In 1998 the father of one of the youngest victims of the Omagh bombing asked him to make an appeal for information to be passed by the police; he rejected the call.

Worst of all, the BBC omitted all reference to his failure to utter a single word of regret or remorse. Without penitence there can be no forgiveness. Lord Lexden London SW1 SIR – In the “troubles” in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 2007, 1,441 British servicemen were killed. They are now forgotten by the Establishment. Their memory is politically inconvenient in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement.

In the desire for political stability, Martin McGuinness is lauded for his statesmanlike peacemaking, and his bloody past is largely glossed over. It is worth remarking that the Good Friday Agreement was given impetus by the intolerable attrition of the IRA through the security forces’ success in intelligence-gathering and by the IRA’s realisation that Catholic enfranchisement would “inevitably”, through a rising Catholic population, lead to a united Ireland “through the ballot box”.

The conflict in Northern Ireland was never dignified by being given the legal status of a war. The soldiers who died are therefore just unfortunate “victims” and, in the eyes of politicians, best forgotten. It’s a good thing that our men did not know this at the time. Peter Richards Poole, Dorset SIR – Your obituary states that Martin McGuinness left a widow. In fact, he left hundreds of widows. Tony Ellis Northwood, Middlesex