It may have been the highpoint of the relationship between Britain and Ireland. Anglo-Irish relations were never warmer than during the Queen’s visit to Ireland in 2011, when she attended a dinner with the great and the good in Dublin Castle, addressing President Mary McAleese with the words: “A Uachtarain agus a chairde” (“Madam President and friends”). A couple of days later, there was the surreal sight of the monarch strolling around the English Market in Cork, joking with the local fishmonger Pat O’Connell. It was a scene that nobody would have envisaged during the darkest days of the Troubles.