Eoghan Harris

Lord Speaker, Lord McFall of Alcluith (right) conducted the ceremony

Westminster statue an 'appropriate tribute' to the legacy of Lord David Trimble

Glorious February sunshine on the last day of the month, before the first day of meteorological spring, in the centre of Belfast at lunchtime, Friday February 28 2025. But the ancient Irish said that spring began at the start of February. Picture by Ben Lowry, editor of the Belfast News Letter

Ben Lowry: The ancient Irish were right about the joy of February and spring

The republican leader is not prettified physically or morally in the nine-part series

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Adams will hate this movie about the IRA during Troubles

Renowned author, journalist and feminist activist Nell McCafferty died at the age of 80 this week. She was reared in a city she would have known only as ‘Derry’

Liam Kennedy: Nell McCafferty - a flawed advocate of social justice

Lord (Dean) Godson, director of the Policy Exchange think-tank, delivers the David Brewster memorial lecture at the Museum of Orange Heritage in Limavady, on April 8 2024, where he spoke about David Brewster, the legacy of terrorism and about unionism. Godson opposed to the Belfast Agreement but thinks it will become a safeguard for unionism

Ben Lowry: A fascinating talk in Limavady by a great friend of unionism

The then Ulster Unionist Party MP David Trimble, shakes hands with Taoiseach John Bruton at the government buildings in Dublin in October 1995, the month after Mr Trimble became his party leader. A devout Roman Catholic, Mr Bruton's repudiation of IRA terror was as much on moral as political grounds

Eoghan Harris: John Bruton – the Taoiseach who understood unionists

The Good Friday Agreement 1998 was the consequence of decades of negotiations amidst a changing Northern Ireland

Letter: I can’t agree with Eoghan Harris's views on media

The then Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams pass within touching distance outside Castle Buildings, Stormont during a break in the 1998 negotiations before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Adams was so aware of Trimble’s almost physical revulsion. that he made constant attempts to shake hands with Trimble

Eoghan Harris: Trimble wasn't fascinated by Adams, he barely tolerated him

Edgar Graham, Ulster Unionist MLA and Queen’s University lecturer, was shot dead at point blank range by the IRA in December 1983 near the university. He is still remembered today as the ‘lost leader of unionism’

Dean Godson: Murder of Edgar Graham deprived unionism of a future leader

If the simple majority clause of the Belfast Agreement has to be respected, as we are so often told, then so too should the secretary of state’s right to make a decision on any border poll without setting out prior conditions

Owen Polley: UK would be stupid to set out the criteria for a border poll

Irish commentators like Fintan O'Toole should take their wagging forefingers out of British faces. Does the continual Brexit bashing in Republic's media conceal a secret wish that the UK will have to do a humiliating u-turn and return cap in hand to the EU?

Eoghan Harris: Pointless southern Brit-bashing about Brexit only benefits SF

SDLP grandee Seamus Mallon and David Trimble in 1999, flanked by Irish taniste of the day Mary Harney and taoiseach Bertie Ahern; this columnist writes that the tolerant and accommodating nationalism of those days has been replaced by a harsher vision of unionists as an obstacle to be overcome

Nationalist-unionist detente of 1998 is dead - unionists are just an obstacle

Director of the London-based think tank Policy Exchange, Lord Godson giving a reading at the funeral of former Northern Ireland first minister and UUP leader David Trimble, who died last week aged 77, at Harmony Hill Presbyterian Church, Lisburn. Picture date: Monday August 1, 2022.

Trimble biographer: Death has finally brought him respect he deserves

David Trimble brought unionism in from the cold. He also forged a unique bond with the then Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, which was to prove crucial. The pair are seen together, above, at the unveiling of a portrait to Trimble

Eoghan Harris: Six reasons why David Trimble was a unique unionist leader

Professor John A. Murphy, seen aged 90 alongside a bust of his younger self, was an Irish patriot, a proud Corkman, a GAA devotee, and an Irish language speaker who denounced republican violence. When he heard of the murder of Edgar Graham he sobbed

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Remembering a much loved historian who despised the IRA

Far from backtracking on his Armagh centenary service snub, President Higgins doubled down on it with a remarkably partisan speech in Co Sligo

Neil McCarthy: President Higgins is in a sentimental Irish republican bubble
When it became clear that Mary McAleese was about to become President of Ireland back in 1997, the writer Eoghan Harris famously wrote that he feared that she would prove a “tribal timebomb”.
Neil McCarthy

Eoghan Harris

Allison Morris to take legal action against writer Eoghan Harris

Ruth Dudley Edwards, @RuthDE, the author and commentator, who writes a column for the News Letter every Tuesday. She is author of 'The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions' and her most recent book is 'The Seven: the lives and legacies of the founding fathers of the Irish republic'

Ruth Dudley Edwards: The silencing of Eoghan Harris is fresh blow to free speech

Ruth Dudley Edwards, the author and commentator, who now writes a column for the News Letter every Tuesday. She is author of 'The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions' and her most recent book is 'The Seven: the lives and legacies of the founding fathers of the Irish republic'

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Truth is the weapon to use against republicans

Sinn Fein's vote has risen spectacularly in the Republic. Mary Lou McDonald celebrates the veteran republican Dessie Ellis’s election on Sunday

Sammy Brush: It is not just people in the Republic who should be marched past th...

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald helps the veteran republican Dessie Elllis (centre) celebrate his general election victory at the count at the RDS in Dublin. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Voters in the Republic ‘should be marched past IRA’s bodies’ says veteran Irish ...

Eoghan Harris, right, with the late Lord Laird, left, and then UUP leader Sir Reg Empey, centre, read a 270th anniversary News Letter at the Reform Club in 2007, the night Mr Harris called on the UUP to form a single party with the DUP

Ben Lowry: The DUP now ought to ponder whether it cares most about itself, or ab...

Conor Cruise O'Brien

Dublin society rehabilitates the far sighted Conor Cruise O'Brien

Alan Black (left), the only Protestant survivor of the Kingsmills massacre, arrives for the start of the inquest in Belfast

Kingsmills inquest: IRA '˜lack courage' to accept responsibility for murders

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