By Frank Millar

David Trimble won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in securing the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday 1998. And he and his Ulster Unionist Party paid the price in the 2005 general election by way of a shattering defeat inflicted by the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists.

The Trimble story might have been left there, the loss of his leadership, his elevation to the House of Lords and his decision to join the Conservatives a mere postscript to this work originally published in late 2004. Yet the history-making didn't stop there, and the subsequent reinvention and transformation of Dr Paisley as a power-sharing leader requires us to revisit Trimble the better to understand the sensational advance in Northern Ireland politics in the intervening period.

In the first edition of this book award winning journalist Frank Millar delivered a compelling profile and forensic interrogation in which a revelatory and self-critical Trimble explained how and why he gambled everything to help bring about the Belfast Agreement.

In this updated second edition Millar also examines Paisley's achievements in the subsequent St Andrews Agreement and explains how Trimble's story became “a tale of two bitter adversaries who trod a strikingly similar path and would reach not dissimilar ends”.

Following Paisley's announcement of his May 2008 retirement date, Millar also sets out the challenges facing the next generation of unionist leaders in the post-Trimble, post-Paisley era.

About the Author

Frank Millar is London Editor of The Irish Times, and his journalism helped make the paper the “house-journal” of the Northern Ireland talks process. An acknowledged expert on unionist politics, he was named Irish print Journalist of the Year in 1998 for his coverage of the Good Friday accord. His citation, penned by his friend the late Mary Holland, praised his ability and determination to understand and reflect the position of all the parties to the Northern Ireland conflict. David Trimble: The Price of Peace was short-listed for the prestigious Ewart Biggs Memorial Prize and in 2007 Frank Millar was the author of “Tony Blair's Irish Peace” in Blair's Britain, edited by Anthony Seldon and published by Cambridge University Press.

“Frank Millar, who is one of our fairest and most knowledgeable writers on Northern Irish politics, does try to place the man at the centre of his narrative, and we learn much...”— Matthew Parris, The Times Books of the Year

“Any contribution by Frank Millar on Northern Ireland is worthy of the closest attention.... This book, however, is something else again. It is a valuable contribution to the understanding of the thinking and motivation of a main participant in the negotiations leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. As such it would be a basic document for historians.... By allowing David Trimble to speak for himself, Frank Millar has drawn from him a riveting account of the thinking of one of the main protagonists at crucial moments in the peace process, and of the dynamics of the process itself. In doing so he has added lustre to his own reputation as a journalist - and he has done David Trimble no harm either.” — Senator Maurice Hayes, former Northern Ireland Ombudsman in The Irish Independent.

“Recent events surely demand that Trimble's record be reappraised. Did Paisley fall because, like Trimble, he was perceived as having made too many concessions to Sinn Fein? Or if, in spite of the concessions, Paisley is to be lauded as an historic peacemaker does Trimble too not deserve the same praise? This book suggests the answers to these intriguing questions.” — Peter Smith QC, Patten Commission.