Donald and Melania Trump are kicking off their unprecedented second state visit to the U.K. on Wednesday, September 17. The president and first lady will stay at Windsor Castle during their two-day trip, with the Trumps joining the Royal Family for a formal state banquet on Wednesday evening. But as fans await an evening of tiaras and evening gowns, memories of past visits between the United States and United Kingdom come to mind.
No one can forget the adorable pictures of Prince George wearing a tiny bathrobe as he met Barack and Michelle Obama in 2016, or the iconic images of Princess Diana dancing with John Travolta while visiting the White House in 1985. But one of the most memorable moments Queen Elizabeth had with a U.S. president wasn’t a state visit at all.
John F. Kennedy was assassinated before he could make an official state visit to Britain, but in 1961 he and his wife, Jackie Kennedy, met Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace during a European tour. It wasn’t a glittering state banquet, but the Kennedys did attend a formal dinner with the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. According to multiple accounts, including Jackie’s own, the evening was far from a triumph.
Queen Elizabeth and Jackie Kennedy both wore blue gowns for their 1961 dinner.
The first issue was the guest list. In Q: A Voyage Around The Queen, Craig Brown writes: "Officials had asked the Kennedys who they wanted to be invited. Jackie’s modest request had been for invitations to be sent to Princess Margaret and Princess Marina, and also her sister Princess Lee Radziwill and Lee’s husband, Prince Stanislaw Radziwill." Jackie’s sister—then on her second marriage—had wed into the Polish royal family. But, as "divorced people" were not welcome at palace events, the Radziwills were initially excluded.
An "upset" Jackie appealed to the British ambassador in Washington, and Queen Elizabeth eventually relented "after much hesitation," Brown notes. Still, the Queen "had her revenge."
As Brown recounts: "Jackie got her way, but was upset first by the shenanigans and then by the dreariness of the dinner itself, to which neither Princess Margaret nor Princess Marina had been invited." Writer Gore Vidal then blabbed to Margaret that the first lady had said conversation with The Queen "had been 'pretty heavy going.'" Princess Margaret, in turn, replied, "But that's what she's there for."
The late Queen and Mrs. Kennedy didn't click during the event.
"I think The Queen resented me," Jackie later told Vidal. "Philip was nice, but nervous. One felt absolutely no relationship between them." Brown adds that Jackie thought Queen Elizabeth "seemed remotely human" just "once" during the evening.
At that moment, Jackie was speaking about "how hard it was to be on public view for such long periods of time," when The Queen confided her own strategy. According to Vidal, "The Queen looked rather conspiratorial and said, 'One gets crafty after a while and learns how to save oneself.'"
Jackie was less charitable with others. "To the blabbermouth Cecil Beaton, she declared that she 'was not impressed by the flowers or the furnishings of the apartments at Buckingham Palace, or by The Queen’s dark-blue tulle dress and shoulder straps, or her flat hair-style.'"
