useful TV, for a change

Just watched a fascinating documentary on the creation of "The House Will Divide". It showed each of the politicians who sat for portrait (as opposed to being painted from other sources), and had little interviews with each during the sittings. Some of the questions were fantastic - asking Martin McGuinness how he reconciled being a church-going Catholic with being a member of the IRA, and on a more amusing note asking David Trimble how he'd like to be remembered; Trimble was left speechless as he considered it, eventually responding, "that's a very good question!". The best quote of the lot was from the artist, however. While describing what the process of creation had meant to him, he said he greatly enjoyed dealing with the politicians as individuals, and was going to find it hard to return to his more usual bigotted sectarian viewpoint.

Oh, he also said that John Hume (whose daughter I once met on holiday) was the best of the lot, because he sat there and said pretty much nothing for the entire session, so he was easier to paint. The artist expressed a wish for 107 more John Humes.