The Queen - Gawd bless 'er - is pictured below walking through a replica of Jamestown with Dick Cheney and Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia. From The Telegraph:

The Queen tiptoed tactfully through one of the more contentious moments in British history yesterday when she visited Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America.

Jamestown was a far more commercially-minded venture than the Pilgrim Fathers' venture 13 years later.

Although they laid the foundations of America's vastly profitable tobacco industry, the original 104 settlers - most of them soldiers - had a miserable time.

Disease, drought and shortage of food caused half of them to die within the first five months. Later, their lot worsened dramatically when they fell out with local Indians.

One of their leaders, John Rolfe, famously married an Indian chief's daughter, Pocahontas, and brought her to London where she died and was buried.

The Jamestown anniversary - carefully labelled a "commemoration" rather than a celebration by organisers - has been marred by criticism of the settlers' slaughter of local Indians and their introduction of slaves, the first to arrive in America.

An recent exhibition organised by the US Parks Service branded the colonists murderers and rapists.

There have even been calls by a Virginia politician for the Queen to apologise on behalf of her country for both offences.

These demands have gone unrequited but the Queen, who visited Jamestown 50 years ago, was careful to stick to the script of commemoration organisers in portraying Jamestown as a meeting of three cultures - English, African and Native American.

"Native American" - that silly term again. And what business has a Virginia politician calling for the Queen to apologise for the behaviour of his ancestors towards the local Indians? It is silly to apologise for the actions of your ancestors in any case, but the modern day British are not the descendants of the people who treated Indians badly - not those Indians anyway.

In a short speech at a lunch in her honour at the governor's palace, she said that Jamestown was a "symbol of convergence of civilisations".

Did the Indians have a civilisation at the time? What a pity even Royalty have to be so PC these days. It was better when they could just say "Off with his head". Unless our Queen is just being polite to conceal her agenda of taking back the colonies.

The visit had its lighter moments. While looking around a museum of objects recovered from the site of the settlement, the Queen's eye was drawn to a spatula, labelled "for severe constipation - a disease that killeth many". Calling over her physician, Cdr David Swain, she told him: "You should have some things like that."

Oh dear. Perhaps Her Maj has been spending too long on the throne. I know she has been having trouble with her vowels.