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President Higgins meets Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall at the Irish Embassy in London
Irish President Michael D Higgins has been welcomed to the UK by the Royal Family at the start of the first state visit by an Irish head of state.
Later he is due to address both Houses of Parliament - another historic first.
Ahead of the trip he said Anglo-Irish relations were at a high but warned there was "significant work" to do secure peace in Northern Ireland.
His trip comes after the Queen became the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland three years ago.
Then Sinn Fein did not take part, but on Tuesday Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander, will attend a banquet hosted by the Queen at Windsor Castle.
Mr Higgins said: "I think Her Majesty in coming to Ireland and addressing for example issues of relations between our two people was doing it the right way."
He was greeted at the Irish embassy in London earlier by Prince Charles before heading to Windsor where he shook hands with the Queen and Prince Philip.
As is customary on official state visits, the president will lay a wreath at the grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, central London.
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President Higgins: "Has there been enough humility? I think there could be a good deal more"
He is also due to meet Prime Minister David Cameron at Downing Street, pay tribute to the work of Irish health professionals, and meet business leaders and London Mayor Boris Johnson.
He will be joined on the trip by Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore.
The statesman, who came to England to work as a waiter when he was 21, said his visit would be "very important for the relationships between the people of Ireland and UK".
The BBC's Ireland correspondent Andy Martin said the trip could not have happened 20 years ago, because of "lingering acrimony" between the two countries.
He said that "changed entirely three years ago", when the Queen laid a wreath at a memorial to those who died fighting for Ireland's independence.
The Queen set another historic precedent two years ago when she shook hands with Mr McGuinness during a trip to Belfast.
Conor Murphy, a Sinn Fein MP and former IRA member, said the president's visit was a "symbolically significant step" on the "journey towards reconciliation and better relationships".
But in a sign of the tensions caused by Sinn Fein's participation in some of the events, Stephen Gault - whose father was killed by an IRA bomb in 1987 - accused republicans of trying to "airbrush" history.
"How can I forgive somebody who hasn't turned around and asked for my forgiveness?" he said of Mr McGuinness on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
For centuries Ireland was under British or English rule and the more recent troubles can be traced back to the partition of the country.
Andy Martin BBC Ireland correspondent
The return leg of the Queen's enormously successful tour of Ireland means there will be no more "firsts" in the attempt to make Ireland and Britain normal neighbours.
When Sinn Fein say Martin McGuinness may go to the Windsor Castle ball, and start talking about the Queen in terms of her contribution to peace, it is a clear indication that relations have changed massively.
The Republic of Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny acknowledges that this visit could not have occurred 20 years ago, such was the lingering acrimony over Britain's role in Ireland, and the IRA's attacks in Britain.
All of that changed entirely three years ago when the Queen did not just acknowledge that emotive history, but faced into it by laying a wreath at a memorial to those who died fighting the Crown for Ireland's independence.
Mr Higgins will struggle to match that symbolism, or indeed the obvious friendship that developed between his predecessor Mary McAleese and the royals in 2011. However, his role in London is designed to break the idea that such a visit is unusual.
Mr Higgins, himself a poet and a migrant worker in England in his youth, will be keen to emphasise those things that tie the counties together, rather than the issues that have so brutally divided them.
Ireland won independence in 1921 following a civil war and guerrilla campaign against British forces.
But six counties were kept under British control, creating Northern Ireland.
President Higgins said there were "a lot of very difficult memories" and that it would be wrong to "wipe the slate clean".
Asked about the Northern Irish peace process, Mr Higgins acknowledged: "There is very significant work to do.
"Affecting a kind of amnesia is of no value to you, you are better to honestly deal with our facts that are standing behind you as shadows.
"How could I say to any family whose family member might be in a wheelchair or somebody who is dead, you must put it behind you?"
Meanwhile Peter Hain - Northern Ireland secretary from 2005 to 2007 - used an interview with The Times ahead of the president's arrival in the UK to call for "an end to all conflict-related prosecutions".
Mr Higgins has been a stalwart of Irish public life, as a politician, poet and the subject of songs.
In an interview with the BBC's Fergal Keane on the eve of the visit, the president was asked if he would bring a gift for the Queen.
"Oh yes," he said. "Something equine, something cultural. The warmth around this visit has been tremendous."
The president and his wife Sabina are expected to fly back to Dublin on Friday afternoon after a week of engagements.
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