That same air of calm defiance on the home front that underpinned the defeat of Nazism was dramatically revived on a glorious summer afternoon in a capital disgusted by last week’s outrage and its ever-rising death toll.

The Head of State took openly to the streets in an exuberant celebration of our finest hour, and was joined by many thousands of her subjects delivering the clearest possible message that London will not be cowed by the cowardly.

The Queen led a series of national events that drew sharp parallels between the middle of the 20th century and last Thursday. She made the connection herself in a speech of tribute to veterans when she said: “It does not surprise me that during the present difficult days for London, people took to the example set by those of resilience, humour and sustained courage, often under conditions of great deprivation.”

A thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey was attended by many members of the Royal Family, Tony Blair and other senior politicians, military chiefs, representatives of other faiths and nearly 2,000 veterans and their partners.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, told the congregation: “Today of all days, we need no reminder that the spirit of murder and humiliation is still abroad.

“As Your Majesty reminded us on Friday, there is a generation of people for whom the sight of a devastated, bombed London will bring back harsh memories; memories not only of physical damage but of the sense of obligation to go on resisting the venomous tyranny responsible for it.”

Paying tribute to the veterans, the Archbishop said: “What we celebrate today — what we celebrate in the records of the last war and of the last week in London — is precisely that instinctive, undramatic awareness of the difference between truth and lies that makes people commit their best energies and risk their lives and safety in resisting oppression and deceit.”

Unlike the First World War, Dr Williams said, the Second had been a clear moral struggle, which had prompted the international community to create the United Nations.

“You cannot understand the impulse of this without recognising the passion that was generated during the darkest days of the war, a passion to see human dignity vindicated after an age of insult and disfigurement.

“That passion will have been rekindled in recent days. In that sense, this service is a fitting response to the terror of the last week and a true complement to all that has been going on recently around the G8 meeting to witness to human dignity.”

Before the service began, the Queen paused in the Abbey courtyard by the memorial to innocent victims of war, already decorated with a floral tribute to last Thursday’s dead.

She laid another as the Dean of Westminster, Dr Wesley Carr, read the Bidding: “We cannot look back, or predict the future, without today recognising the tragedy of terrorism in the present. Where there were two mighty conflicts, two major arenas, there has always been a third — the home front. As then, so now, there remains this home front, on which all, civilian and military alike, stood and still stand firm against a perceived evil.”

Overwhelmingly, the hour-long service was a remembrance of the innocents.

During the singing of the 23rd Psalm, screens around the Abbey showed wartime newsreel clips of evacuated children, Civil Defence workers, nurses, land girls digging for victory.

The Abbey’s seven Books of Remembrance, which list all the British civilian dead of the Second World War, were carried to the altar by present-day home-front fighters: a policeman, firefighter, railwayman, nurse, headmistress and ambulancemen.

Fresh from the Abbey, the Queen entertained 2,000 veterans to lunch in the Buckingham Palace garden. Colonel Peter Hodgson, 84, who commanded the 15/19 King’s Royal Hussars and saw active service across Europe, said of last week’s London bombings: “This hopeless Government, who let bad ones into the country and we have no idea who they are — that’s the problem.”

Later, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh drove down the Mall before a crowd of thousands to watch a pageant on Horse Guards Parade, before returning leading a parade of 600 veterans.

As a climax, the Queen emerged on to the same palace balcony where she had stood 60 years ago with her parents to acknowledge the vast crowd.

As they watched a fly-past of vintage aircraft and the dropping of one million poppy leaves from a Lancaster bomber, the throng filling The Mall beneath them, as in 1945, was large enough to prove beyond doubt that London, once more, will not be deterred by the enemy.

IN NUMBERS

1 million poppies released from a Lancaster over Horse Guards Parade

250,000 watch the celebrations in The Mall

115,000 mesages of thanks on Union Jack bunting in Trafalgar Square

90,000 visitors to the Living Museum, displaying tanks and aircraft, in St James’s Park

11,000 veterans on the Horse Guards Parade

2,000 veterans invited to lunch at Buckingham Palace, attended by the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of York and the Earl and Countess of Wessex

19 Second World War aircraft including Hurricanes and Spitfires in London flypast

6 military jets and 5 helicopters join the flypast

6 Hawk jets fly over Cardiff commemorative service, attended by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall

4 Tornadoes and a Nimrod fly over Edinburgh service of thanksgiving, attended by the Princess Royal

£2.8 million raised for The Nation’s Biggest Thank You appeal

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