Peter Taylor: Ireland After Partition

BBC2, 9pm A hundred years on from the partition that divided Ireland into a republic in the south and a part of the UK in the north, veteran journalist Peter Taylor offers his own view of the past – and what the future holds.

Taylor has been reporting on Northern Ireland since 1972 and saw the worst of the Troubles’ violence at close hand. As his rich archive footage reveals, he has interviewed all the leading figures in the conflict, from Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams (far right with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness) and loyalist firebrand Ian Paisley (inset) to the MI6 agents who negotiated in secret with the IRA to lay the groundwork for the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

Taylor’s balanced analysis is a brilliant potted history and a disturbing reminder that, though the bombs and guns are now silent, the underlying issues that caused so much bloodshed have yet to be resolved.