So there’s not a chance that McGuinness – or any living terrorist godfathers would now be prosecuted and convicted for their crimes should some new evidence come to light. The Negotiator's Cookbook will be followed by another new book of short stories by Adams, some five years in the making, which is due to be published in 2019. As transformational journeys go, this one, it might be said, takes the biscuit. Gerry Adams, the former president of Sinn Féin and a veteran Irish republican, has revealed he is writing a cookery book.

Adams has been at the centre of power within Sinn Féin since the early 1970s after he was released from internment without trial. He has always denied claims that from 1972 onwards he held a senior position, firstly in the Belfast IRA, and later as overall leader of the Provisionals. As a result, Mr Adams’ detention had not been lawfully authorised. His detention was therefore invalid, and it followed that he should not have been convicted of attempting to escape from lawful custody for the elementary but inevitable reason that the custody in which he had been detained was, in fact, not lawful. His appeal is therefore allowed, and his convictions are quashed.” He is interned without trial in Long Kesh prison camp as an IRA suspect, but freed that summer to join an IRA delegation that held secret meetings with British ministers in London. 1973-76 Justice for individual servicemen is to be welcomed. But the real significance of the Bill is for the collective – the reaffirmation of the obligation of the British State, as the legal governing power in Northern Ireland, enjoying a monopoly of legal armed force, to protect its servants. Not blindly, but properly.

The party, alongside other more militant republicans, however, continues to revere one of the most controversial figures in 19th century Irish republicanism, John Mitchel. Documents released to the public records office under the 30 years rule have since revealed that the government knew there had been a procedural irregularity in relation to the detention of Adams and other republican detainees who had tried to escape with him from the heavily guarded internment camp.

Sinn Féin activists have also been involved in grassroots anti-racist campaigns in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Martin McGuinness as deputy first minister in the north of Ireland paid a personal visit to a group of Roma families who were subjected to a campaign of racist violence in south Belfast just under a decade ago. I will be allowing my name to go forward for the position of Uachtarán Shinn Féin [party president]. And if elected I will be setting out our priorities and in particular our planned process of generational change, including my own future intentions.” Gerry Adams was unlawfully denied compensation after his historical convictions for attempting to escape from prison were overturned, a high court judge has ruled. He told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One that it was “doable” to grant Northern Ireland special designated status as the region had voted 56% in favour of staying inside the EU in the 2016 referendum. There have been strong hints that Adams may seek to run for the Irish presidency when the elections are held in autumn 2018.

Adams is imprisoned several times and starts to write under the nom de guerre of Brownie for the republican newspaper An Phoblacht, mapping out a political strategy beyond the IRA’s armed campaign. 1981