The smile winning the nation over

What a smile she has when she likes to turn it on. There's a warmth and radiance in it that, as it did today, can light up the whole nation.

The Queen's address this morning was more than just the official start of her Golden Jubilee celebrations, far more than just a ceremony that began with last night's dinner at 10 Downing Street with five of the Prime Ministers who have served her.

It was also the moment when she seemed to step out of the shadows that have hung over the royal family these past 20 odds years, causing even once fervent monarchists to wonder whether royalty in this country has any value beyond that of providing endless copy for gutter newspapers.

Gone were the furious frown that the late Diana, Princess of Wales seemed to have etched permanently on her brow and the perpetual tightening of the lips created by Fergie's toesucking adventure.

Instead, the smile - the magical transforming smile she inherited from her great great grandmother Queen Victoria - was back in business.

It was radiant enough last night as she posed with her former premiers, sparkling the more brilliantly among the forced grins of aging politicians, some of whom would clearly like nothing better than to tear each other's throats out. But in Parliament today it shone so brightly that she could for once have left her diamonds at home. And with it came a triumphantly royal paraphrase of the best song in Stephen Sondheim's soon to be revived musical, Follies.

Forget all the disasters of the past two decades. Forget Charles's metaphysical twittering, Anne's rudeness and Philip's thousand and one diplomatic gaffes. I am still here. And, if you want me, you've got me for keeps.

She is still, of course, locked in sadness after a double family bereavement, the death of her mother and her younger sister,

Margaret. However radiant she seemed last night and today, we knew there was still an aching void in her heart. Yet ironically, the death of the Queen Mother, helped create the mood that allowed the Queen to recover her smile today.

Anti-monarchists in sourpuss publications like the Guardian claimed that public expressions of mourning for the Queen Mother would be slight and soon over. Instead, hundreds of thousands came out to mourn her. As well as the funeral, it was a rebirth of ordinary, decent values in a world seemingly gone mad with sex and violence and incontinent rage. It was the law-abiding silent majority, taking possession of their own streets once again.

Certainly, the Palace PR machine is doing its best to rectify the cold and withdrawn air that the Queen has maintained since her last great smile, at her Jubilee celebrations in 1977.

The Princess Royal has gone on record to refute the idea that her mother was cold and distant to her and her three brothers. This week's television documentary includes footage of the Queen laughing and even putting on funny voices.

But she does not have to go to any of these lengths to make me, at least, ready to doff my cloak and lay it over the muddy path so that those floaty little royal feet may proceed on their way, unsullied.

She only has to give us that smile.