Danny Morrison recalls meeting Prince Charles at Glastonbury

The world's media may have focused on the meeting and handshake between Prince Charles and Gerry Adams in Galway on Tuesday, but the Sinn Féin president is not the first prominent member of the party to meet the prince.

Back in 2010, Sinn Féin's former director of publicity Danny Morrison met the Prince of Wales in a field in Glastonbury.

BBC News NI online covered the story at the time but a conversation between the BBC's Ireland correspondent Chris Buckler and Mr Morrison on Wednesday brought to light photographs that had captured the meeting.

Mr Morrison was at the festival with an assortment of family members and it had been an annual event for the past 15 or 20 years.

He was relaxing with friends in the healing fields, an environmentally friendly area at the festival when he spotted Prince Charles.

"Bono and U2 had been due to play that weekend and Bono had fallen and hurt his back in Germany, so we were lying in this field and could see some sort of fuss and this group of people walking towards us and somebody said 'I bet it's Bono coming to apologise for not being able to play'," he recalled.

"I got up and Prince Charles was walking towards me along with Michael Eavis, the founder of the festival, so I just went over towards him and put my hand out and I said 'how are you' and he sort of scrutinised me and said 'do I know you?'

"I sort of told a white lie and I said 'yes, I had been at a dinner at Hillsborough Castle' to which he said, 'oh, right, right, right'.

"I don't think he was being right, I remember, I think he was just being courteous."

It was a brief encounter.

"He was only allowed to stay in the one spot, for about 25 to 30 seconds, then some of the plain clothes policemen moved in and said 'Your Highness we need to move on'," he said.

"At that stage I turned around and had a conversation with Michael Eavis because I was explaining to him that I wanted him to come to the West Belfast Festival to do a guest interview. Then he moved on."

Mr Morrison found the prince to be smaller than he expected, but "very, very warm and affable with everybody, comfortable".

"In fact I'm not even sure when the word selfie was brought into the lexicon but people were getting photographs taken left right and centre and he didn't object," he said.

Reflecting on Gerry Adams' meeting with Prince Charles in Galway, Mr Morrison described it as "extremely important, as a symbol of reconciliation".

"All sides have hurt each other," he said.

"Leadership is about leading and although we're republicans we have to recognise the fact that the British public revere, both the Queen and Prince Charles as the future king, they revere them as their heads of state so I think it was the right diplomatic thing to do.

"It also had greater significance because of the conflict here and because of Gerry Adams representing republicanism and Prince Charles representing the head of state."