President Reagan and The Queen did seem to get on very well maybe that was because of their mutual love of horses and riding

The Queen and President Reagan are said to have bonded over their mutual love of horseback riding when they met at Windsor Castle in June 1982, riding side by side on an eight-mile, hourlong tour of the grounds. Mr Reagan was the first president to stay at the Windsor Castle.

Mr Reagan and his wife Nancy became the only presidential couple to host the Queen at their own home when they had The Queen and Prince Phillip stay at their ranch near Santa Barbara, California, in 1983.

The visit coincided with a spell of very heavy rain which continued for days

On the same trip, the royals were treated to a state dinner in San Francisco at the MH de Young Memorial Museum. The bad weather continued and during her remarks, the Queen joked: “I knew before we came that we had exported many of our traditions to the United States. But I had not realised before that weather was one of them.”

Over the president’s laughter, she added: “But, Mr President, if the climate has been cool, your welcome and that of the American people have been wonderfully warm.”

The Queen made Mr Reagan an honourary knight in recognition of America’s covert assistance to the UK during the Falklands War. Their meetings came at a time when the bond between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Mr Reagan was one of the strongest of any transatlantic parings of the special relationship, and at the height of the Cold War.

In London, after President Reagan was awarded his Honourary Knighthood, Mrs Thatcher held a Dinner Party at Number 10 at which occasion she invited Richard Todd and his wife – as we know Richard Todd and Ronald Reagan had starred together years before in The Hasty Heart made here in England – and the two met up and chatted about their time spent together on the film. When it was made in 1949 Ronald Reagan was struck by the fact that we had rationing and he was not able to buy all he wanted as things were in short supply. This experience really brought home to him the hardship that this country had endured during the War and went a long way to cementing the very close relationship we had with the USA.

In an earlier visit or maybe this visit Margaret Thatcher had presented Ronald Reagan with a set of Front of House Still from the Hasty Heart, because, as she later explained, whenever they met he always mentioned the time he spent in England with Richard Todd working on the film

Above: Ronald Reagan and Patricia Neal have a look round  London 1949