As Prince Charles and Gerry Adams meet, history hangs there like smoke | Jonathan Jones

As if their hands were bonded together by Superglue, the prince and the man who denies he was ever a terrorist simply cannot prise their hands apart

I quickly became fascinated by the video, playing it over and over again. It was the sound that got me - noisy, bland, impenetrable as it was. If not for an imminent deadline I might have spent hours trying to crack that enigmatic soundtrack, like a character in Brian de Palma’s Blow Out or Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. As it was I played the clip at different volumes, through different speakers, but the brief dialogue between Prince Charles and Gerry Adams never got any clearer. The most you can catch is the deep intonation of Adams’s voice, but the words are lost.

Related: Prince Charles and Gerry Adams share historic handshake

A bland greeting? It does not look like one. It looks as if he is saying something emotional and deliberate

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