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President Higgins: "Has there been enough humility? I think there could be a good deal more"
The first official visit to the UK by an Irish head of state is due to get under way.
President Michael D Higgins will meet the Queen and address 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.
Ireland won independence in 1921 following a civil war and guerrilla campaign against British forces.
However, six counties were kept under British control, creating Northern Ireland.
For centuries Ireland was under British or English rule and the more recent troubles can be traced back to the partition of the country.
President Higgins said there were "a lot of very difficult memories" and that it would be wrong to "wipe the slate clean".
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 Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness will attend a banquet hosted by the Queen at Windsor Castle on Tuesday.
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."
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".
"My hope for the visit at the end of it all is that people will in ever more numbers come to share in experiencing the history, the present circumstances and culture, and do so in ever greater numbers."
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.
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.
"All of that changed entirely three years ago," he added, when the Queen lay 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.
Asked about the Northern Irish peace process, Mr Higgins said: "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?"
Politician and poetAs is customary on official state visits, the president will lay a wreath at the grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, central London.
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.
Mr Higgins has been a stalwart of Irish public life, as a politician, poet and the subject of songs.
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