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I recorded an interview this afternoon with the Irish Foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern TD, who was on a visit to Belfast. Last week, Mr Ahern visited East Timor -- officially known as Timor-Leste -- and we talked about how their Irish government's initiatives in that conflicted society are part of a developing policy of "active neutrality". I explored the relationship between that policy and the assistance given by the Irish government to US military and CIA flights landing to refuel at Shannon Airport. We also talked about the current state of the Northern Ireland peace process. You can hear the extended interview on this week's edition of Sunday Sequence.

At lunchtime, I interviewed Baroness May Blood in Queen's University's Great Hall. May, as ever, was on great form and the audience loved her. She described her upbringing in Belfast and how her family didn't realise they were poor because they didn't have social workers to explain that to them. And she offered some telling verbal pen sketches of many of the people she has known and worked with over the years, including Ian Paisley, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mo Mowlam, and Tony Blair. She also defended the term "milly" -- as a former mill-worker -- and smiled approvingly when I introduced her by saying that she had gone from Fruit of the Loom to Peer of the Realm.