Just a few years before the Troubles began, the Home Office knew so little about the Orange Order that it resorted to an encyclopaedia before tendering advice to the Queen.
Peter Robinson was “well aware” that DUP support for an independent unionist candidate in the 2001 General Election would see the Fermanagh-South Tyrone seat go to Sinn Féin, according to a civil servant who discussed the issue with the then MP.
The south Armagh watchtowers had a function which was so secretive that British security agencies did not even tell America what they really did, according to declassified Government files.