England has been waiting for some time. More than half a century, in fact. Its mood, over the decades, has veered between frustrated and furious, hopeful and resigned. It has endured countless false starts and even more false dawns. It has, in a way, grown quite good at waiting. It is only now that the impatience has set in. After all those years, it is the last few hours that have proved the hardest.
Leicester Square, right in the heart of London, was thronged from late in the morning on Sunday, wreathed in the cordite smoke of flares and fireworks.