Jimmy Carter’s homespun style was evident from his inauguration at the start of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee year, which marked 25 years on the throne.
“They are not our king and queen. There is nothing royal or imperial about them,” The Washington Post wrote about the president and his first lady, Rosalynn, after their swearing-in celebrations in January 1977.
The article added: “They refuse to ride in a limousine, and rode instead to their own inaugural events in a mustard-coloured Lincoln. She wears her unfashionable six-year-old evening dress from his gubernatorial inaugural ball for ‘sentimental reasons’. He wears a clip-on tie. They walk from the Capitol to the White House. They pray openly and talk about Christ. He carries his own luggage.
“They hold hands in public, touch each other often, even kiss a lot. Really kiss.”
Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn walk down Pennsylvania Avenue after his inauguration
AP
Carter was a novice in international diplomacy and Britain would be his first test, four months into his presidency, for a G7 meeting in London.
The president was welcomed at Heathrow airport with a handshake from Jim Callaghan, the prime minister, then launched into his first kiss of the tour. It was for Baroness Stedman, a Labour member of the House of Lords representing the Queen in the greeting party.
Approaching a platform set up with microphones for both leaders, he shook the hand of a saluting police officer who appeared “perplexed at his total lack of reserve”, the Associated Press reported.
Standing in the drizzle with no umbrella, he declared: “It is not an accident that this is my first overseas trip because of the historical ties that have always bound the United States of America and the United Kingdom together in a special and very precious relationship … We have a special mutual commitment to world peace, toward addressing in a courageous fashion the special problems that afflict human beings in the need for better healthcare and better education and jobs so that we won’t be robbed by inflation.”
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Carter had hoped to visit the grave of Dylan Thomas, his favourite British poet, at his final resting place in Wales, but, at Callaghan’s suggestion, he agreed to spend Friday in the northeast of England. It had special significance for American tourists as the ancestral home of George Washington.
The region was also supposed to symbolise both leaders’ G7 goal of improving conditions for workers against a backdrop of global economic difficulties.
Carter leaving the US ambassador’s residence in Regents Park in 1977
PA
From receiving the freedom of the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne — mercifully in sunny weather — to touring the American-owned Corning glassware factory in Sunderland, huge crowds turned out to catch a glimpse of the president.
Carter called it the most memorable trip of his life, adding: “I sense here a quiet determination and hope that is an inspiration for me.”
Addressing a throng of 20,000 in front of Newcastle civic centre, Carter immediately won cheers by hailing them with the local phrase “howay the lads”. On the drive in from the airport, he had spotted a newspaper sales poster stating “howay Jimmy” and another referring to “the lads”.
He asked Ernie Armstrong, an MP accompanying him, what the references meant. Armstrong explained that, put together, “howay the lads” was the traditional way of encouraging the Newcastle United football team and a sure-fire way to win over the crowd.
In his speech, Carter adopted the local name for a native: “I’m very happy to be a Geordie now.” One explanation for the name’s origin was as a description for local supporters of King George I, the father of the British king after whom Carter’s home state of Georgia was named.
Carter posed outside Old Hall, the home of Washington’s forebears, including the 12th-century ancestor who changed the family name from Hertburn. He shook hundreds of “calloused, honest hands”, as he called them, and cuddled a couple of babies as he made campaign-style forays into the crowd. Millions of Americans watched live TV coverage.
The president continued to wow the international press and his fellow leaders the next day back in London, leading the other summiteers from Downing Street in a 17-minute walk across St James’s Park to Lancaster House for lunch, causing a scrum of press and astonished public.
Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen Mother, Carter and Giulio Andreotti, the then Italian prime minister
PA
During the Buckingham Palace state dinner that evening, Carter seemed taken aback by the opulence of his surroundings. “It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen,” he said afterwards.
Carter was afforded pride of place among the 33 guests, showing Britain’s prioritisation of its transatlantic relationship over the other nations represented: France, West Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan.
It was a dazzling occasion. The president “was openly awed by the pomp and splendour of the Queen of England in Buckingham Palace … When a pair of tall double doors swung open and Queen Elizabeth II entered, resplendent in a bejewelled formal gown, the president’s famous smile was that of any mere peanut farmer in the presence of a royal woman,” the Chicago Tribune wrote. “He approached her hesitantly and sat in awe by her side.”
Carter later recalled telling the Queen “how much the American people appreciated her coming over last year to celebrate our 200th birthday. And she said that it was one of the warmest welcomes she’d ever received. I told her that I got a similar welcome in northern England.”
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Over a dinner of salmon fillet St Germain and mousse de volaille a la creme, Carter said he discussed with the Queen “the need for world peace” and their countries’ close “historical background[s]”.
Photos showed Carter and the Queen Mother all smiles as the president escorted her by her white-gloved hand to their places in a formal group portrait with the G7 leaders before dinner. Her later distress at his overfamiliarity arose at the end of the evening as a result of a parting kiss.
It was only revealed almost six years later in a newspaper diary column, thanks to an unnamed dinner guest at Clarence House, the Queen Mother’s London residence, who divulged that the royal matriarch was in the habit of giving an “anti-toast” during which “she raises her glass and utters the names of people she does not particularly like.”
On this occasion, she was heard to mutter, “Tony Benn, Idi Amin, Jimmy Carter”. The first of these was a prominent Labour MP and lifelong anti-royalist; the second was the brutal former military dictator of Uganda then in exile in Saudi Arabia. But Carter?
A guest plucked up the courage to ask the Queen Mother. “Because he is the only man, since my dear husband died, to have had the effrontery to kiss me on the lips,” she replied.
In a conversation recounted by William Shawcross in her official biography published in 2009, the Queen Mother said that she saw Carter coming in for his kiss: “I took a sharp step backwards. Not quite far enough.”
Carter clearly felt that the incident had been blown all out of proportion when he reflected in an autobiography in 2015 upon “a beautiful banquet with the British royal family” that was a “very enjoyable event that caused me some pain a year or two later.”
Carter recalled his “delightful chat about serious matters and also personal things” at the dinner table with the Queen, who “complained about having seven different uniforms she had to wear on annual occasions and how difficult it was to fit into them when her weight tended to increase. We decided it might be good to shift to centimeters on everything except waistlines, which would continue to be measured in inches.”
He then recounted that he was approached by the Queen Mother after the meal and they fell into conversation about how their families were affected by all the attention that went along with public life. Then he discussed the kiss, which from his point of view was a simple parting gesture nowhere near the royal lips, blaming the media even though it was recounted in the Queen Mother’s own official biography: “As we said good night, I kissed her lightly on the cheek and she thanked me for coming to visit. More than two years later, there were reports in the British papers that grossly distorted this event, stating that I had deeply embarrassed her with excessive familiarity. I was distressed by these reports but couldn’t change what had happened — nor did I regret it.”
While relations with the royals took an awkward turn — unknown at the time to the public and media — the international talks in London, which included a Nato meeting on his final day, were heralded as a great success for Carter. His charisma convinced The Times to declare that “for the first time since President Kennedy died the western world can feel that it has a leader.” It added: “His personality and optimism have stolen the show.”
The poet Dylan Thomas
ALAMY
On the Sunday morning before the second day of G7 discussions, Carter attended a communion service at Westminster Abbey given by the archdeacon, the Right Reverend Edward Knapp-Fisher, who gave him a tour afterwards. Carter asked Knapp-Fisher whether Dylan Thomas could be commemorated in Poets’ Corner along with William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. The archdeacon said that Thomas, who died aged 39 in 1953 after a drunken binge in New York, may in the fullness of time be included “whatever his morals”. Carter replied that quite a lot of time had already passed, adding: “I would like to recommend it. I will pray for his soul if you will commemorate him.”
Reports of Carter’s interest inspired a petition that was supported by Britain’s greatest living poets, including Sir John Betjeman and Ted Hughes. Five years later, when a plaque commemorating the Welsh man of letters was finally installed next to those for Henry James and George Eliot in the abbey, Thomas’s daughter Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis credited Carter for providing the impetus. Carter eventually fulfilled his wish to see Thomas’s home, resting place, and writing shed in Laugharne, Wales, on a private post-presidential visit in 1986.
Adapted from Royal Audience: 70 Years, 13 Presidents — One Queen’s Special Relationship with America by David Charter published by Putnam