David McKittrick: A warm welcome that would spook Franklin

Colin Powell, Jack Straw and Condoleezza Rice sat in a row against the wall of the Throne Room at Hillsborough Castle, waiting with the media for the arrival of the President and the PM.

The US Secretary of State had arrived with curiously little presence for such an eminent figure, walking into the room with no fuss and little impact. Jack Straw looked privately pleased to be sandwiched between such persons of power.

General Powell gazed at the rich, ornate tapestries around the room and the oil paintings of ancient colonial governors and other worthies.

These were not the first Americans to visit the discreetly magnificent castle. Benjamin Franklin stayed there several nights as the guest of Lord Hillsborough, on what turned out to be a most unproductive visit.

That attempt to consolidate Anglo-American relations was an abject failure.

Franklin said that his host had treated him "as an orange that would yield no more juice and therefore was not worth more squeezing".

Lord Hillsborough confirmed he was less than impressed with the American founding father, declaring: "Ben Franklin, instead of walking the streets of London, ought to be in Tyburn or Newgate."

But that was then, in the run-up to the American War of Independence; this is now, in the latter stages of the war in Iraq.

Yesterday every effort was devoted to symbolising the closeness of the two countries. Even before the President and the Prime Minister walked in, this message was emphasised by the meticulously arranged array of flags, 10 of them, behind their podiums.

The five Stars and Stripes and five Union Jacks were all topped by gleaming brass eagles.

The flags symbolically touched in the middle of the stage, making a glorious, patriotic blaze of red, white and blue.

Mr Bush and Mr Blair, dressed mostly in blue and red, helped to complete the picture.

Their rhetoric did the rest, stressing as it did their sense of common purpose and seeking to dispel the impression that they differed on the UN: it had a vital role, both repeated, singing from the same hymn-sheet.

The two leaders had two 45-minute walks in the castle gardens, as well as talks in the charming Lady Grey drawing-room, which is, they say, haunted. Outside, meanwhile, there were plenty of modern-day spooks: secret servicemen with earpieces and really neat sunglasses.

Ben Franklin would have been bemused by history's turnarounds.