“It had been that violence [of the early Troubles], beginning with internment in August 1971, that had first brought Trimble out of Queen’s University, Belfast, where he was a lecturer and dean of the law faculty, and into politics,” writes Anne McHardy in The Guardian’s obituary.

Gerry Moriarty, in The Irish Times, notes: “In a line that appeared chiefly directed at the IRA and Sinn Féin he said: ‘Just because you have a past doesn’t mean you can’t have a future.’ This was a generous comment from a unionist who had lived through 28 years of Troubles violence and who was close on hand when the IRA murdered his friend, UUP colleague and fellow law-lecturer Edgar Graham in the grounds of Queen’s University in 1983.”

The Times describes Lord Trimble as “at heart a lawyer and a scholar”. On jointly winning the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume in 1998, it says: “Trimble was asleep in a hotel in Denver when the call came through telling him of the prize. He thought it premature.”