Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, brings a secret weapon with him today. It, or rather she, is his mother-in-law. “Chère Belle-mère, would you accompany me on my state visit to the English Queen and Duke?” “Say ‘S'il vous plâit', Nico.”

This makes it a unique chevachee in the long history of Anglo-French ententes cordiales and not so cordiales. Henry VIII did not think of taking his mother-in-law, Isabella of Castile, to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. This may have been partly because he was hoping to make an alliance there with France against Spain. William of Normandy did not bring his mother-in-law, Adèle, Princess of France, with him on his surprise state visit to Hastings. Nor, as far as is recorded, to his first English des res in the Tower of London or Windsor.

But autres temps, autres moeurs. The man known to the French as Speedy Sarko is trying to mend fences after his precipitate fall in popularity. He includes females in his Cabinet and his life. And he has been told that Britain loves its tradition of powerful mothers-in-law: the Queen Mother, Mary of Teck, Victoria, Eleanor of Aquitaine, dragon mother-in-law and Queen first of France, then England. Marisa Bruni-Tedeschi, Carla Sarkozy's mother, has behaved with dignity in the firestorm of publicity that has surrounded her daughter's latest marriage. She is of an age to talk to the Queen about the young people. But it is as well that President Sarkozy is not bringing his own mother as well, as was originally proposed. Two French virtual Queen Mothers at once could be an embarras de tendresse.