Martin McGuinness

I lost a lot of friends at the hands of the British Army. The person who actually introduced me to my wife, Colm Keenan, was murdered by the British Army. He was a member of the IRA, but he was unarmed.

Obviously, Ian Paisley and I were regarded as very bitter opponents. When we decided in March 2007 to govern together, both of us understood that we weren't going to change our views but that we had to work with one another if we were to end the conflict and move forward.

I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.

Over the past decade... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.