Includes bibliographical references and index.

This is the most comprehensive account yet of how the Irish Government worked to bring the Northern Ireland conflict to an end, from Sunningdale to the Good Friday Agreement.
Based on eight long-form interviews with key officials and political leaders, it throws much-needed new light on how the many tensions and problems of the peace process were overcome, and what were the political and institutional changes that emerged.
Providing a range of new and original insights on the individual and collective efforts needed to make a peace process work, the book first covers the power sharing experiment at Sunningdale before detailing the negotiations that led to the Anglo-Irish Agreement and, more substantively, the peace process that followed. Many here are interviewed for the first time and each chapter takes the reader into the heart of the negotiating room, revealing the intensity of purpose and commitment needed to reach a political settlement.
Through the voices of those on the inside, this book and its companion second volume provide the most dramatic and authoritative picture yet of how the peace process came to change the course of history.