The Ulster Unionist Party politician, journalist, novelist, Stormont minister and minister in the power-sharing executive in 1974, Mr Roy Bradford, has died.
Mr Bradford (78) was the UUP member for East Belfast in the Northern Ireland Assembly and head of the Department of the Environment in the executive.
Between 1965 and 1972 he was a Stormont MP and held a number of positions including Minister of Commerce and Minister of Development.
He was elected to North Down Borough Council and served as mayor. He remained a member until his death.
He was a television producer and writer and served in British army intelligence after graduating from Trinity College Dublin, in 1942. He went to school at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.
He was a prolific journalist whose commentary pieces often appeared in The Irish Times. Two years ago he urged that talks take place and that not only should Sinn Fein be included but that it must be reassured that during the talks there would be no question of "espousing a unionist agenda".
He was also a novelist. The Last Ditch was a barely fictionalised account of the inside struggle by the Northern Ireland cabinet in 1972 against direct rule from Westminster.
He married Ms Hazel Lindsey in 1946. She was a former chairwoman of the Ulster Unionist Party. She died in 1994. He is survived by his sons Connor and Tobias.
A UUP colleague, Mr John Taylor, said he regretted that Mr Bradford had not lived to see the new Northern Ireland, which owed much to Mr Bradford's values of tolerance matched by conviction. The leader of the SDLP, Mr John Hume, said he was shocked to hear of Mr Bradford's death and offered his deepest sympathy and that of the SDLP to Mr Bradford's family.