I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.

In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?

Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.

A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by

their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism

with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service.

Today we're finishing a week of programmes on the 50th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday shootings in Northern Ireland.

Louise Hidalgo is taking us back to 1998 and a historic moment for the two sides in the

long-running sectarian conflict. The Belfast Agreement, or the Good Friday Agreement as it became known,

was signed on April 10th, Good Friday. It's six o'clock, the news with Brian Perkins. A deal has been struck for peace in Northern Ireland. A document outlining a way ahead has been agreed by all the parties involved in the talks at Stormont. The talks chairman, Senator George Mitchell, said the agreement was right for people in the north and south.

The deal had taken almost three days of round-the-clock negotiations,

two years of talks and 30 years of conflict.

Paul Murphy was Tony Blair's junior minister for Northern Ireland.

And he says that moment, minutes earlier,

when politicians who had once refused to sit in the same room together sat and nodded their agreement is a moment that he will never forget.

Senator George Mitchell got us all together, the Irish and the British governments, and said,

look, we can now call a clean recession with the two governments and all the different political

parties represented at the talks,

which he did at around about five o'clock, and he then went around the room. I can remember sitting next Tony Blair,

asking each of the participants, the two governments and all the political parties, whether they agreed

with the final agreement, the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement.

And one by one, they all said yes.

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