Much now depended upon the personality and the capabilities of the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw. Amongst the rather colourless products of the modern political machine, Whitelaw was an exotic. Behind a façade of booming affability there lurked one of the shrewdest minds in British politics. When encountered in person, he was a singularly difficult person to dislike, even in a community which had its share of sceptical and cynical people. He arrived at Stormont Castle accompanied by an exceptionally able group of junior Ministers, some of whom were later themselves to achieve Cabinet rank. He brought with him a very strong team of Whitehall officials led by the sardonic Permanent Under Secretary (PUS) Sir William Nield and including a later official head of the Northern Ireland Office in Philip Woodfield and a future First Civil Service Commissioner in Dennis Trevelyan. Very prudently, sensitive and considerate efforts were made to bind members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service into the new official team. The Head of the Civil Service, Sir David Holden, moved down the hill from Parliament Buildings to join the former Cabinet Secretary Sir Harold Black and myself as immediate advisers, with invaluable local knowledge and ‘feel’, to the new Ministers. It was indeed to fall to me, I remember, to draft a first ‘submission’ to the new Secretary of State on the subject of an approach from the Apprentice Boys of Derry, an organisation which had not so far been the subject of close study amongst the mandarins of Whitehall. ‘The Secretary of State must appreciate’, I wrote, ‘that these are not apprentices, they are not boys and many of them do not come from Derry.’ In writing this I had perhaps at the back of my mind some words used by Edward Heath on a visit to New York, where I was then serving in the British Industrial Development Office. Heath, explaining to Americans the rather esoteric title under which he then conducted important Foreign Office business relating to Europe, had assured them that he was ‘neither a Lord nor a Privy, nor a Seal’.