By Clare Murphy BBC News Online

The imperial yacht carrying Tsar Alexander II and his 70-strong entourage was due to arrive in Gravesend, Kent on 13 May, 1874.

But after running aground near Holland, the craft was forced to dock at the closer port of Dover, causing consternation and disappointment among the thousands who had tussled for tickets to witness the spectacle.

The tsar was assassinated by Nihilists in 1881

A glimpse of the tsar, however fleeting, was one which was nonetheless apparently worth holding out for.

At Windsor station, men and women decked out in their best waited nine hours for the royal train, although when the tsar arrived it was so late that one "could hardly get a glimpse on account of the darkness", as one contemporary report noted.

And for Queen Victoria, it meant a very late repast.

"What a contretemps!" she exclaimed in her diary. "We only sat down to dinner, in fact supper, at a quarter to eleven."

But this was the last time she, or any of her descendents, would receive a Russian head of state in an official capacity for 129 years.

An offer of asylum to the Russian royal family, in the run-up to the 1917 revolution was apparently withdrawn by King George V, for fear of whipping the British left into a fury.

In what many see as a belated expression of solidarity with the family, who were subsequently murdered by the revolutionaries, British royalty refused to visit Russia for nearly a century.

No ploughs

Despite the many years which have elapsed since Russia's last state visit, Mr Putin will follow a similar itinerary to his predecessor.

Much of the effect of the decorations was lost on account of the darkness, it being past 10 when the royal train ran into the station The Graphic 1874

He may not be obliged to watch the workings of a steam plough in Virginia Water, now a London satellite town, but the Russian president will be expected to attend a banquet or two.

After a rather quiet meal on his first night as a result of his tardy arrival, Tsar Alexander II enjoyed a feast on the second, in the presence of some 140 guests.

It was a mainly male affair, one report observed. "Apart from the Queen, and the Princesses and the ladies of their suite, not many ladies seem to have been bidden to the feast.

"It was chiefly an imposing muster of great noblemen, ministers and ex-ministers of state, privy councillors, general and staff officers and diplomats."

The Royal Household has refused to release details of the guest list, but the feast in honour of Mr and Mrs Putin at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday night is likely to include many of the same sort of characters.

Rarely has an imperial journey to foreign ports been undertaken at a more favourable moment than the present trip of his Majesty St Petersburg Golos 1874

Like his predecessor, Mr Putin will also take part in an away day, travelling to the Faberge exhibition in Edinburgh, Scotland.

For his part, Tsar Alexander II attended a fete at Crystal Palace, where he listened with "evident pleasure to music, both vocal and instrumental".

Some 28,000 visitors turned out to see him, "and the cheering which everywhere greeted the tsar must have been highly gratifying to him", reported The Graphic.

Towards the middle of his stay, Mr Putin will follow in the exact footsteps of his predecessor as he attends a banquet at the Guildhall.

The Guildhall banquet for Tsar Alexander II was a lavish affair. A huge pavilion was erected in the Guildhall yard containing a throne emblazoned with the Romanov coat of arms.

Wednesday's event is likely to be on a more modest scale.

Domestic troubles

Both Mr Putin and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair are hoping to use his trip as an opportunity to repair some of the damage inflicted by the row over the US-led war against Iraq.

The tsar had no such need of a bridge building exercise, having recently married off his daughter, Grand Duchess Marie, to Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria's son.

"Rarely has an imperial journey to foreign ports been undertaken at a more favourable moment than the present trip of his Majesty," declared a leader in the St Petersburg Golos newspaper.

But he did share some of Mr Putin's problems on the home front.

As the current Russian leader continues to fight Chechen separatists who want independence from Russia, the tsar had his own difficulties with revolutionaries, commonly known as Nihilists, who wanted to destroy all economic and social institutions.

Ironically it was his own reforming zeal - he was responsible for emancipating the serfs in 1861 - which shook up Russian society and unleashed these radical forces.

His reaction was brutal repression, but the imprisonment and exile of young revolutionaries ultimately did him no favours.