You don't have permission to access /forums/The Queen performed an astonishing act of forgiveness today in the name of peace when she shook hands with Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness - twice. Belfast was the scene for an extraordinary encounter between the British monarch and the former IRA commander - now Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister - which would have been unthinkable as little as ten years ago. Her Majesty somehow even found it within her to smile as she met the man who once headed the terror network responsible for killing Lord Mountbatten - the treasured cousin she knew as 'Uncle Dickie'. He was murdered by the IRA in 1979 along with his young grandson in a bomb blast during a boating trip off Mullaghmore, Co. Sligo. It was an atrocity that sent shockwaves through the Royal Family. Yet today, in a Jubilee year full of surprises, the Queen spent five minutes with Mr McGuinness behind closed doors in a room within the city's Lyric Theatre, and then the pair shook hands again publicly outside in full view of the world's cameras. Read more: http:/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165320/The-Queen-shakes-hands-IRA-commander-Martin-McGuinness-historic-meeting-closed-doors.html on this server.