I suspect that in those final exhausted hours a few closed minds were prized open, or at least open enough.It was a heavy, dark, tobacco and coffee-stained seam of mental shrugging, phase-rubbing and deal cutting which will be mined for posh memoirs and pub anecdotes for years ahead - the moment when Clinton reached John Hume in the refreshment pen; the moment so-and-so burst into tears; the bad joke that broke the worst atmosphere ... Without the ticking clock set off by senator George Mitchell's deadline- yet another Northern Ireland time bomb, but one that could only be defused by about a thousand fingers working simultaneously - there wouldn't have been the agreement. To hear Sinn Fein's Mitchell McLaughlin herald "A beautiful day" or David Irvine of the PUP pinching himself and trilling, "I never thought in my life time I would see it", was superbly surreal but undeniably moving too.The over night political melodrama of this final phase of negotiation was evidently essential to the deal. The fact that it was the pursed familiar faces of Ulster hardman who were expressing hope and openness made the breakthrough particularly poignant. But it is the vital spirit of democracy: if there isn't some hope of making the world better through representative politics, then the system itself begins to rot away.You could tell the politicians themselves felt some of this - felt, in Tony Blair's phrase "The hand of history".

In churches around the country this weekend people will be celebrating and praying - "Let's hope". And in pubs, cafes and millions of kitchens there will be a murmuring of "Well, you never know", and "Hmm. Could be." This uncommon mood which steals out at some election results, or whether Mandela is released, or at the first IRA ceasefire or a Camp David handshake, cannot be defined or measured. So before plunging back into the grey media river of ifs and buts and the reverses and disappointments to come, it is worth standing back and simply enjoying the event All political systems need days like these. I heard the news with a shudder of excitement in a Highland Hotel People were asking each other about the news and smiling. The same exhibition based on the same historical disaster that happened 76 years ago this week, and two national papers with two entirely different stories, both of which act to reinforce the current opinions and prejudices of their readers. All of whom can wear "Validated By History" stamps on their foreheads..

GOOD FRIDAY, indeed. Yesterday was special - a day which asked cynics to take another look and made pessimists seem suddenly boring: A day which gave a good answer to the old question: "Mummy, what are politicians for?" A day which conjured a generous vision out of small minds. Furthermore, the Guardian reminds us, the exhibition shows that the British Foreign Office secretly pleaded with US President William Taft to ensure that a senatorial enquiry into the sinking exonerated the British Board of Trade. The issue was one of censorship, cover-up and collusion in high places.So, QED.

Shipping companies apparently put pressure on cinema chains in a bid to "suppress material which might frighten away passengers". Just before the second world war, says the Guardian, the British Chamber of Commerce demanded that the Board of Trade stop Alfred Hitchcock making a film about the Titanic. But they certainly don't do much for noblesse oblige.So, if the Telegraph chose to puncture the "myth" of the way that class decided who lived and who died on the Titanic, what might the liberal Guardian discover at the very same exhibition? Titanic's owners tried to gag filmmakers, that's what. These included three Irish girls, and - curiously - Mr Buckley himself.These facts, of course, do not really justify the American Hollywood myth of the deliberate lock-out, which is the version of history preferred both by vulgar old Marxists and vulgar new Meritocrats. In addition some third-class passengers were denied initial access to the boats by sailors who forbade them to enter the first-class area. And other evidence states that there were many barriers between steerage and the rest of the ship, and that most of them stayed up.