David Trimble, Northern Irish hardliner turned consensus-builder dies at 77

FILE PHOTO: Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble smiles after a meeting held with his party in UUP Headquarters in Belfast city centre. REUTERS//File Photo

BELFAST (Reuters) - Few Nobel laureates can have endured as much vitriol during their careers as David Trimble, the one-time hardliner who led Northern Ireland's Protestant majority into a historic peace pact with their Catholic rivals and who died on Monday aged 77.

Many Protestants regarded him as a traitor selling out their British identity to Irish republicans, while few Catholics warmed to a man a good number suspected never really wanted to treat them as equals.