Bobby Sands: The hunger strike that changed the course of N Ireland’s conflict

Forty years ago, on 5 May 1981, 27-year-old Bobby Sands, the IRA’s leader in the Maze prison outside Belfast, starved himself to death. Peter Taylor, who covered the story at the time, says it marked a watershed in Northern Ireland’s Troubles, helping to pave the way for the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, to become today the largest on the island of Ireland.