*After Air Force One landed at Heathrow at 1.45pm, George Bush flew in his helicopter Marine One to Windsor Castle, where he spent 45 minutes with the Queen. She gave the President and Laura Bush a tour of her Berkshire palace's White Drawing Room. They were joined by the Duke of Edinburgh and America's ambassador to London, Robert Tuttle, and his wife Maria, for afternoon tea, sandwiches and cakes. 

*The presidential fleet includes a back-up second jumbo jet, Air Force Two, a smaller 757 and four helicopters. Air space over Heathrow was cleared for more than an hour last week to allow a military cargo plane carrying Mr Bush's armoured cars to land at nearby RAF Northolt. The President is accompanied by American secret service personnel. The Metropolitan Police deployed 1,200 officers to deal with more than 1,000 protesters. 

*Mr and Mrs Bush went on to Downing Street last night for an informal dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with the Browns and three historians – David Cannadine, Martin Gilbert and Simon Schama. The President will lunch today with the Knights and Ladies of the Garter in Windsor Castle's Waterloo chamber; Prince William will attend, wearing the order's ceremonial robes for the first time. Mr Bush will then fly to Belfast to join Gordon Brown for talks with the Northern Ireland First Minister, Peter Robinson, and his deputy, Martin McGuinness.  

British Ready To Announce Iraq Pullout 

elsewhere, the music slowly stops …..

It gets an outing on every visit of an American president to these shores. And yesterday's appearance of President George Bush in London, stopping by on his farewell tour of Europe, was no different. Both Gordon Brown and Mr Bush paid tribute to the 'special' relationship between our two nations. 

The 'special relationship' is a concept that cuts little ice with hard-headed diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet it was once more than a platitude. While the default position of much of the world has traditionally been to look upon America with guarded scepticism, Britons (at least for the past century) have been instinctively well-disposed to the United States and its leaders. The bonds of a common language and a history of shared struggle in two world wars did indeed make this relationship something out of the ordinary. 

So perhaps Mr Bush's most significant legacy, as far as Britain is concerned, will be the destruction of the instinctive trust of America and its leaders that once prevailed here. 

Leading Article: The Tragic Legacy Of A Disastrous President