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“... There are two points to make about this meeting. The then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Patrick Mayhew, insists that he didn’t know about it. But that doesn’t mean Fred was flying solo. The Duddy archive includes a fax sent by Fred to Duddy in August 1993 which strongly suggests Fred had some level of clearance to meet the IRA in spite of ...”

“... necessary to do any of the thousand special things that have been done there. John Major and Sir Patrick Mayhew do not like it, but one of the defining characteristics of Irish Nationalism – and Unionism, for that matter – is that it has always had a tradition of physical force. The survival of that tradition is lamentable and anachronistic, but ...”

“... which had not fully backed the peace process. The Unionists’ chance came in March 1995, when Sir Patrick Mayhew, Peter Brooke’s successor, visited Washington. Tall and well-spoken, Mayhew looked like a man from another era, born to rule India not a few damp counties. Without warning, and despite the fact that the ...”

“... government’s suspicion that none of the Unionists could be trusted. Even now, Godson says, Patrick Mayhew, Northern Ireland secretary at the time, describes Trimble’s performance at Drumcree as ‘undoubtedly triumphalist’. He aroused great hostility in nationalist Ireland and among what Godson calls ‘mainland progressive opinion’, which ...”

“... given to the question of whether ‘complete’ meant ‘permanent’. On The World at One, Sir Patrick Mayhew was invited to respond to a (dubbed) interview with Martin McGuinness in which Sinn Fein’s vice-president had said the ceasefire would endure ‘in all circumstances’. Mayhew said he thought what Martin ...”

“... policy in Northern Ireland. In January 1988, the then Attorney-General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, told the Commons that, given certain ‘considerations of national security’, no charges would be brought against eight named RUC officers for various offences including conspiracy to murder, nor against certain MI5 officers involved in ...”

“... British and Irish governments. The peace process was on the verge of unravelling. An embarrassed Patrick Mayhew, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, announced that the British were only negotiating with the IRA because of McGuinness’s ‘conflict is over’ message. An indignant McGuinness denied responsibility; nobody in Ireland ‘with a ...”

“... notice). The following day, part of the text of a pompous letter from the Solicitor-General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, to Heseltine informing him that he had made a few trivial mistakes in a letter he had written on the Westlands business to Lloyds Bank, was mysteriously leaked to the newspapers. Two days later, on 8 January, Sir Raymond Lygo, chief executive ...”

“... Reports from Europe were bound to dismay people with sensitivity to suffering. Young Christopher Mayhew, scion of a country-house family, former President of the Oxford Union, but soon to be a Labour MP, had reached Germany as a soldier in March. His father, Sir Basil, vice-chairman of Colman of Norwich, didn’t like what his son wrote home about friendly ...”

“... to an academic conference – is that of the eight-year-old watercress-seller interviewed by Henry Mayhew in London Labour and the London Poor. The watercress girl was a ‘good and helpful child, who eased her mother’s life’, much as the young Steedman tried to be. At roughly the same age as Mayhew’s ...”

“... the end of November 1993, the Prime Minister and his Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, had been utterly convincing in their determination never to deal with terrorists of any sort. Then it emerged that the Government had all along been engaged in dialogue not with the mere ‘pseudo-terrorist’ Gerry Adams but with the IRA ...”

“... evictor (with some help from the tax-payer) of the tenant with too colourful a professional life; Patrick Nicholls, suspected drunk driver; Nicholas Ridley, too loquacious an advocate of anti-German feeling; and Mrs Edwina Currie (‘most of the egg production in this country is, sadly, now infected with salmonella’). Then there is the long line of ...”

“... average. The ‘not’ factor explained things like de Valera’s extraordinary speech on St Patrick’s Day in 1943. He said that Ireland would be a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the rompings of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths and ...”

“... Adams were to see off his opponents, he would have to produce results. In the early Nineties, Sir Patrick Mayhew was able to taunt Sinn Fein as being ‘a mere ten per cent party’ and not worth talking to; most commentators agreed, and the consensus was that while the Party had a solid core of loyal supporters it was unlikely to expand. Sinn Fein was ...”

“... in use.’ When the Cabinet was feuding over Westland, the Sun naturally backed her, and so when Patrick Mayhew, the Solicitor-General, told Michael Heseltine that his account of the rival bids might contain ‘material inaccuracies’, this confidential legal advice was immediately leaked to the Sun, whose sensitive and nuanced front-page account of ...”