Sir, – Your obituary of Geoffrey Howe ("Tory grandee who ended Thatcher's career", October 17th) attested to many of his qualities, not least his unfailing courtesy.
In June 1993 Lord Howe kindly agreed to be interviewed for my Queen’s University master’s thesis on Mrs Thatcher’s Irish policy. Lord Howe had prepared meticulously for the interview for my thesis and significantly enhanced the quality of my research. He recalled, as foreign secretary, a meeting in Downing Street on October 4th, 1984, shortly before the Brighton bomb, in which he drew two diagrams, one depicting the state of relations in these islands in 1984 and a second depicting what they might look like in 2084.
The first showed three lines joining Northern Ireland and Great Britain and one line each joining Northern Ireland and the Republic and the Republic and Great Britain.
In the second, he had, and I quote from my dissertation, “three lines or struts connecting each of the three entities, representing the relationships between all three, ie three lines representing the relationship between the northern part of the island and the southern part of the island, three lines joining the northern part of the island of Ireland and the larger island to the east, and three lines joining the southern part of the island of Ireland and the larger island to the east, Great Britain.”
I recall he told me that the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 was “an attempt to deconsolidate the prejudice” and sought to create “unique structures reflecting the uniqueness of the relationships between Britain and Ireland”. Lord Howe told me “it is difficult to believe” any other British prime minister other than Mrs Thatcher could have achieved the Anglo-Irish Agreement and that “our grandchildren” would be better off for it. – Yours, etc,
MARTIN O’BRIEN, MSSc
Belfast.