Paul Murphy, a genial Welshman, came to the post of Northern Secretary in October 2002 with the reputation of being a safe pair of hands.
Journalists had been previously been treated to three colourful Northern Ireland secretaries - Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson and John Reid.
Mr Murphy, having served in Northern Ireland before as a junior minister during Mo Mowlam's tenure, was already familiar to all of the North's principal players because of his involvement in the talks which led to the Belfast Agreement.
Unusually for a direct rule minister, he was liked by all sides and that affection did not wane in the 2½ years he ran the Northern Ireland Office.
Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams recalled: "On a personal level, Paul Murphy is a nice man and he's fairly straightforward in private conversation.
"I remember one time an issue came up and I said to him: 'Did you really think you'd be taking that decision?' He replied: 'Coming to think of it, no'. That's how he is.
"Paul Murphy was a safe pair of hands for the British Labour government here but he didn't break any Delft over the matters effecting us."
Devolution was suspended when Paul Murphy returned to Stormont in October 2002 and it remained that way throughout his time as Northern Ireland Secretary.
There were three attempts to break the political deadlock - two involving Sinn Féin and David Trimble's Ulster Unionists and one last December featuring Gerry Adams's party and the DUP. On each occasion, the deal faltered over IRA intentions.
A self-confessed history buff, he left it to Tony Blair and his chief of staff Jonathan Powell to try and make history in Northern Ireland. But the quest for permanent powersharing and an end to IRA and loyalist paramilitarism remains elusive.
Unionists are even more suspicious of republicans in the wake of the Northern Bank heist and the murder of Robert McCartney.
Paul Murphy also made his mark controversially on a number of other areas. In 2003 he appointed the four-member Independent Monitoring Commission which scrutinised how paramilitaries operated their ceasefires and how the two governments fulfilled their peace process pledges.
Despite criticism from Sinn Féin and the Progressive Unionists, he imposed fines on both of them last year after the IMC reported serious breaches of the IRA and Ulster Volunteer Force ceasefires.
A consultation was also launched last year on dealing with the thorny issue of Northern Ireland's past and the needs of victims. Paul Murphy travelled to South Africa to learn from its experience of operating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Nationalists were alarmed by his handling of demands for a public inquiry into alleged collusion between members of the security forces and loyalist gunmen in the 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
New legislation radically altering the terms of all future public inquiries was condemned by human rights groups, as well as the Finucane family, because it gave ministers, not the tribunal chairs, the power to decide what could or could not be heard in public.
It also drew criticism from retired Canadian judge Peter Cory, who the government had asked in the first place to examine the case for an inquiry into Mr Finucane's murder.
As Northern Ireland's Assets Recovery Agency confiscated the homes and other spoils of criminal gangs and loyalist paramilitaries, Paul Murphy was involved in efforts to persuade the Ulster Defence Association to end its criminal activities.
The jury is still out on the success of those talks, with the organisation, like the IRA, still to prove it is willing to end involvement in criminal enterprises and attempts to rule communities by the gun.
Nigel Dodds (DUP) always found Mr Murphy "to be a perfect gentleman . . . whatever the policy differences, and we did have our differences, he had the ability to relate to people. Ulster people like that. We have had a lot of cold fish in that role in the past but Paul has a genuinely warm personality."