The terrorist who turned politician
From terrorist to MP and devolved government minister, Martin McGuinness has been at the heart of the republican movement since the very start of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland more than three decades ago.
His expected first public confirmation that he was the IRA’s second-in-command in Londonderry at the time of Bloody Sunday, will come as little surprise to those who have studied the republican movement.
He has sidestepped questions about his role in the IRA for years, but admitted being an "active republican" and on the run at times.
Born in the Bogside area of Derry in 1950, he was an active republican from the start of the Troubles in 1969.
He was twice convicted of IRA membership in the 1970s.
He was arrested many times after that north of the border, but was never convicted by a British court even though the security forces were convinced he was the IRA Chief of Staff on a number of occasions.
It is said he was the man who sanctioned the killing of the Queen’s cousin Earl Mountbatten, among many others.
Back in July 1972 he was a member - with Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams - of a top level IRA delegation which was flown to London in secret for talks with the then Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw.
The talks, at the height of the worst month of violence of the entire Troubles, failed to produce a ceasefire.
But significantly, nearly two decades later, it was Mr McGuinness who secured the backing of the IRA’s army council to allow Mr Adams to start his dialogue with SDLP leader John Hume which paved the way for the IRA’s 1994 ceasefire.
In 1981 Mr McGuinness gave the oration at the funeral of IRA hunger striker Francis Hughes and was prominent at many other IRA funerals.
And in 1981, when Sinn Fein entered electoral politics, Mr McGuinness became a key spokesman. He was a member of the Stormont Assembly between 1982 and 1986.
During the early 1990s, he was a key channel in dialogue between representatives of the Thatcher and Major governments and the IRA leadership - despite Mrs Thatcher banning him from entry to mainland Britain.
Following the 1994 ceasefire he became the Sinn Fein chief negotiator and three years later he won the Mid-Ulster parliamentary seat for the party at the last general election.
Like Mr Adams he refused to take his seat because it would have meant taking the oath to the Queen.
He was a key figure in the lengthy inter-party talks which led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and was elected to the new Northern Ireland Assembly which was established soon afterwards.
In the devolved administration, he was appointed as the Education Minister at Stormont, a job which he has taken to with relish and won plaudits both within the civil service and other political parties for his grasp of his brief.
Intensively secretive about his private life, he is known to be married with four children and one grandchild. A fanatical fly-fisherman, he joked ahead of the establishment of the power-sharing Executive, that his dream job would be Minister for Fly-fishing.
But as Education Minister he has to wrestle with one of the most controversial issues of the devolved administration - reform of education and whether to abolish the 11-Plus and if so how to replace it.
Mr McGuinness, who left school at 15 without any qualifications, has made it clear that his personal choice would be to scrap the annual selection exam which he says brands the majority failures at 11.
