There must have been moments yesterday when Major Gagarin could have wished himself back in the solitude of space. Especially last night at a reception at the Hyde Park Hotel arranged by the Great Britain-USSR Association. It was attended unexpectedly by Mr Macmillan – who had earlier found Major Gagarin “charming” – Lord Home, and most of the Cabinet.

From the archive: Russia hails 'Columbus of space' Read more

The admiring guests, about five hundred of them, unrestrained by police, treated the small body of the guest of honour rather like a ball in a rugby scrum. The crowding enthusiasm was overwhelming and, to say the least, inconsiderate on a hot evening at the end of a long, long day. Major Gagarin had to be man-handled into another room in order to breathe at all, and at 7.30 he left the party, half an hour before it was due to end.

After this he was to have attended a dinner at the Dorchester given in his honour by British business men, but he asked to be excused and returned to the Russian Embassy. A spokesman at the Soviet exhibition said that Major Gagarin no doubt wished to rest before his lunch with the Queen today.

Later in the evening, however he slipped out of the embassy in civilian clothes for an hour and a half’s sight-seeing. A man at the embassy said: “Major Gagarin is sleeping now. I suppose he just went round the West End and Central London and saw the lights, but I can’t really tell you.”

Lindbergh recalled

It had been a day of triumph. Although London’s doubtful weather shut the spaceman up in a closed black car, London’s roaring, waving welcome everywhere he went was warm and spontaneous beyond comparison. Some older watchers in the crowds said that it reminded them of when Lindbergh came – another daring, personable young man from overseas.

Whatever protocol reservations there might have been at London Airport on Tuesday, Londoners and foreign visitors in their thousands have taken the matter into their own hands and given this small, smiling man the welcome they consider worthy of a Columbus of the Space age.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin during his visit to Admiralty House, London, to meet Harold Macmillan, 13 July 1961. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images



Yesterday he visited the Mansion House and the Tower of London, lunched with the Royal Society, called on the Prime Minister, went to the Air Ministry, the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR, and to a reception at the Hyde Park Hotel.

Major Gagarin spent about a quarter of an hour with the Prime Minister at Admiralty House yesterday afternoon. The closed car spoiled the view for many staid civil servants at the upper windows of Government offices opposite Admiralty House, but it drove slowly enough for the thickening crowds, many of them foreign tourists getting their sightseeing with cream on it, to see the major waving and smiling. “Lovely lovely, he’s like on the telly,” was the comment of truant tea girls from the offices.



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