Jonathan Powell was chief of staff to Tony Blair and the chief British negotiator on Northern Ireland. In his new book Talking to Terrorists How to End Armed Conflicts, Jonathan concludes that every time we meet a new terrorist group we say we will never talk to terrorists but in the end we almost always do.

Jonathan Powell worked for the Foreign Office for fifteen years before becoming Tony Blair's Chief of Staff in 1994. Since leaving government he has worked with a Geneva-based NGO, negotiating between governments and terrorist groups in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has now established his own NGO, InterMediate, to continue this work. He is currently also the Prime Minister's special envoy to the Libyan Transition. His booked Talking to Terrorists: How to End Armed Conflicts was published in 2014.

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