It was once unthinkable.

A former member of the Provisional IRA’s Army Council shaking hands with a woman who epitomised everything he had fought against for decades.

The same could be said of Queen Elizabeth II. Here was a woman who was the public face of the oppressing force for many in Northern Ireland. Her close cousin Lord Mountbatten was killed by an IRA bomb as he holidayed in Sligo in 1979.

And yet, there they were, shaking hands. At a reception dinner, McGuinness stood for the national anthem he had vowed to resist for all of his life.

This clip shows a later meeting between the pair, in Hillsborough, Northern Ireland, 2016.

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