Playing poker in the Last Chance Saloon

A biography of over 1,000 pages whose subject is the leader of a provincial political party which has five MPs at Westminster and could, if the more alarmist projections from the recent European elections are fulfilled, lose them all to Paisleyites at the next might seem excessive. Yet the story which forms the heart of the book is a fascinating and important one. Godson demonstrates that without Trimble the historic Belfast Agreement and the peace process itself could have long since foundered for lack of Unionist support.

Although the book’s subject is David Trimble and the broader ‘Unionist family’ it provides much new information and many insights into the British, Irish and US dimensions of the Ulster conflict. The deep involvement of the Irish state in public policy in Ulster since the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and the subsequent internationalisation of the search for a settlement mean that the travails of the Unionist community cannot be understood in a purely provincial context.