Lord Gowrie: The long road to forgiveness

From the presentation speech for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Award, at the Irish Embassy in London

Twenty years ago I was a minister in the Northern Ireland Office. My job, as an Irishman with a Scots name and a German wife working – somewhat to his surprise – for a very English government and in the throes of moving home from Co Kildare to Wales, from the Pale to beyond as it were, my job was to try and explain the politics of the tribe to the politics of the purse. In the end, the Anglo-Irish agreement was signed. No longer would the way forward in Ireland be a matter for Britain alone. We, the Vipers as Enoch dubbed us, had won.

Politics are immeasurably improved now. There will continue to be fits and starts. At present, we are in a fit, with the prospect in late May of a start.

Both Christopher and Jane Ewart-Biggs have been emblems, beacons. I am now an ex-Lord but it was wonderful seeing Jane in the House when we were both members.

In my day in Ireland, mornings began with a report from Long Kesh, from the H Blocks (I was Prisons Minister), from all the bewildering nomenclature of the Maze. Then came news from a dark nowhere we called Liaison.

One bright miracle day was when Lady Faulkner took me to see the archive of the Troubles being formed at Linen Hall. It seemed the most even-handed institution on our islands; those were not ecumenical days. As Roy Foster reminded us, the Linen Hall Library is also a society for promoting knowledge. The archive seemed to say, with TS Eliot: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" I could not be torn away then and it has been 20 years a-growing now.

It is a complete pleasure as well as a great honour to announce that Linen Hall's Troubled Images has come in as winner in a strong field.