As Her Majesty the Queen shook the hand of IRA cheerleader Martin McGuinness today, the shudder of distaste in some quarters throughout Northern Ireland and the nation was palpable.

McGuinness is a man with blood on his hands from The Troubles who gloated at the murders of soldiers and civilians, and who counted the assassination of the Queen’s cousin, Lord Mountbatten, as a victory for his cause.

Yet this is a handshake that will make history. It is a great symbolic moment. The Queen is leading the nation in an act of dignity, compassion, and forgiveness.

• Watch the Queen shake hands with Martin McGuinness

McGuinness is a man who has put away the bullet and the bomb to play a central part in the new future being built in the province which has completely changed the atmosphere.

It is a handshake which cements the break with the unhappy past and signals the ultimate embrace for the process which now has former enemies working together in the interests of their communities.

There have been thousands of victims of IRA violence, including a number of Shropshire soldiers, and for many it will be impossible to forgive not only the killings but the cowardly, twisted and merciless tactics of the IRA terrorists.

But is it any more distasteful for the monarch to shake the hand of a reformed terrorist than it was for Tony Blair to free hundreds of unreformed terrorists who were responsible for massacres on the streets of Britain?

It was the price of peace.

Time is a great healer, but for some it will never heal completely.

Things have changed, and changed for the better.

And it is surely preferable to have headlines about a handshake – an act of friendship – than headlines and pictures of sickening atrocities which were the IRA’s stock in trade for so long.