From a brooch to the queen’s iPod: A history of gifts between the U.S. and U.K.

The U.S. might have been born out of rebellion against a British monarch, but the two countries now also have a long history of diplomatic relations. And what’s a friendship without gift-giving?

Presidents and monarches have been exchanging gifts on diplomatic trips for nearly two centuries. Some gifts have been infamous — such as George W. Bush gifting Queen Elizabeth II a golf cart-size electric vehicle in 2008 — while others have hit just the right note — such as King Charles’ gift on Tuesday to President Trump of a bell from the British submarine HMS Trump.

The most famous — and lasting — gift from the U.K. to a U.S. president was the Resolute Desk. The desk, which has been a centerpiece of the White House since 1880, was gifted from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes. The desk was made from the wood of the HMS Resolute, a British ship that became stuck in ice and abandoned before being discovered by an American whaling ship in 1855. It was refurbished and given back to England, and the Resolute Desk was crafted after the ship was decommissioned in 1879.

The Resolute Desk has been used by every president since Hayes except Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. (It had been loaned to an exhibition until Jimmy Carter requested it for his Oval Office in 1977.)

The Obamas

When the Obamas made a visit to see Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in May 2011, President Obama received a collection of presidential letters to and from Queen Victoria, the queen’s great-great-grandmother. Among the letters was one from John Quincy Adams to then-Princess Victoria in 1834. There was also a letter from Victoria to Mary Todd Lincoln following the assassination of her husband Abraham Lincoln.

Two years earlier, President Obama made headlines when he gifted the queen an iPod. At the 2011 visit, the Obamas gave the queen a leather-bound album with rare memorabilia and photographs from her parents’ King George VI and Queen Elizabeth’s 1939 visit to the United States.

The Trumps

Mr. Trump is a well-known admirer of the British royal family. He made his first official visit to the U.K. as president in July 2018. On that trip, the president gifted Queen Elizabeth with a pewter horse — one of many equestrian-related gifts the U.S. presented to Elizabeth and Prince Philip over the years.

Mr. Trump visited the royal family three times during his first term, and has already visited once in his second term. 

King Charles surprised Mr. Trump on Tuesday with the gift of a bell from the HMS Trump, a T-class submarine launched in 1944. The name Trump doesn’t actually refer to a person’s name but the word “trump.” All 53 T-class submarines, built leading up to and after World War II, received names beginning with T — everything from Tuna and Tempest to Tally-Ho and Tiptoe.

The HMS Trump had a nice term of service for the U.K., surviving the war and eventually being scrapped in 1971.

Queen Camilla had a surprise of her own when she arrived in the U.S. for this week’s visit. She was seen wearing a brooch with the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes flags presented to Queen Elizabeth on her first visit to the United States in 1957.