Many years ago I looked up to Martin McGuinness. Most within the ranks of the Provisional IRA did likewise. When we were just moving into our teens, he was the republican Adonis strutting the streets of Derry with martial airs, putting it up to the military might of the British with whatever armed prowess he could muster. When he travelled to London in 1972 along with five other IRA commanders for talks with the British government’s William Whitelaw, it seemed proof positive that the armed struggle which had whisked the IRA delegation across the Irish Sea would soon keep the British on their own side of it.