The formalities over, Ireland and Britain finally sat down to dinner

THE significance of President Michael D Higgins dining in state at Windsor castle last night is that it is the culmination of British recognition of Irish independence. It is also a full recognition of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

This exchange of high honours, within the ramparts of Windsor Castle, puts a gilded public patina on a reality that, at first painfully and then slowly, evolved over decades. State visits have been going on since the Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon, but the first state visit to an independent Ireland was not until 1961, when Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco came here.

The first outward state visit by a president of Ireland had only been nine years earlier, in 1950, when Seán T O’Kelly travelled to the Vatican, in what was also a Holy Year.