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| Northern Ireland politicians from the early 1990s, by Gerald Scarfe for the New Yorker |
In present Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness is viewed as the more moderate and conciliatory politician compared with the Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. Yet a quick down historical accounts and observations show that the reality is the inverse. As is often the case in Northern Ireland, perception is incongruent to fact. Northern Ireland poet Nick Laird
wrote:
"Growing up in Cookstown in County Tyrone, I would occasionally wonder what it would be like to be Martin McGuinness’s son. He was infamous for being Sinn Féin’s number two, and for being the officer commanding of the Derry brigade of the IRA, a position he assumed, as he recently admitted, in February 1972."
