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CARBIS BAY, England – Queen Elizabeth II was present at the G7 meeting in Cornwall, England, on Friday, stumbling during a group photo with world leaders and cutting a cake with a sword. But on Sunday, when she welcomed President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden to her home, Windsor Castle, it was a very special visit, with cameras and reporters staying away.
Mr. Biden and the Queen inspected a guard of honor of archers in the sun-kissed castle grounds before retiring for tea. The Queen has taken refuge in Windsor since moving out of Buckingham Palace early last year as the coronavirus pandemic put pressure on Britain.
It was Biden’s last meeting before leaving for Brussels, the next stop on his European tour. It was a nice calming down to a visit marked by an ice-breaking meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose pro-Brexit government was seen as ideologically aligned with Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump.
Mr Johnson praised Biden as a “breath of fresh air” and said he and the president were “absolutely on the same page” on issues such as climate change and the education of women and girls. He said Biden’s economic program bore “some similarity” to his government’s “upgrading” agenda, which aims to develop economically disadvantaged parts of northern England.
However, on every presidential visit to Britain, the meeting with the Queen symbolizes what diplomats on both sides still reflexively call the “special relationship” – a term Mr Johnson recently said he doesn’t care about because it made Britain sound healthy. needy.
At a reception in Cornwall on Friday, Biden and his wife appeared relaxed as they chatted with the Queen, who turned 95 in April. Earlier, she drew a laugh while taking a choppy, socially distancing group photo by asking, “Are you supposed to look like you’re having a good time?”
It was a happy contrast to the grieving figure who sat alone in a choir booth at St George’s Chapel in Windsor three months earlier, during the funeral of her husband, Prince Philip.
“We talked for a long time,” Biden told reporters after the meeting. “She was very gracious.”
“I don’t think she would be offended, but she reminded me of my mother,” he added. “In terms of her looks and just her generosity.”
With the exception of one representative, reporters traveling with the president were not allowed on the ground once Mr. Biden arrived from Heathrow Airport on his helicopter, Marine One.
The president had met the Queen before, but not since 1982, when he was a senator on a trip sponsored by the British-American Parliamentary Group, which promotes relations between Parliament and the US Congress.
There is no clear match between the two: Biden celebrates his labor roots and Irish American heritage. In his first speech after arriving in Britain on Wednesday, he based on a passage from a favorite poem, “Easter, 1916” by William Butler Yeats, about the Irish uprising against British rule.
But the two have a common loss experience: Mr. Biden’s first wife and daughter, Nelia, were killed in a car crash shortly after he was elected to the Senate in 1972. And in 2015, his eldest son Beau died of his brain injury. cancer. The Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, died on April 9 at the age of 99, just before his 100th birthday.
“Today would have been Prince Philip’s 100th birthday,” Biden said on Thursday, offering his condolences to the Queen and her family. “I know there are a lot of people feeling his absence today.”
Philip’s death has prompted some to speculate that the Queen will withdraw from the public eye. But she has been crystal clear in recent weeks, presiding over the official opening of Parliament and traveling to Cornwall for a reception with Mr Johnson, Mr Biden, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders.
At a Friday lunch, she was handed a ceremonial sword for cutting the cake, which she handled very carefully. An aide told her that there was an ordinary knife nearby to do the job, and the Queen complied, “I know there is–that’s even stranger.”
After nearly seven decades on the throne, the Queen has met every American president since Harry S. Truman, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson, and has been subjected to a host of presidential gestures, quirks, and peculiar blunders.
She shared a cake recipe with Dwight D. Eisenhower, joked about lost sons with Gerald Ford, discussed horses with Ronald Reagan, went to a baseball game with George HW Bush, and hit his son George W. Bush with a slip of language in which he suggested they existed for American independence. year 1776.
However, there have been few confrontations compared to her meeting with Mr. Trump in 2018. The president appeared to advance directly in front of the King as the two were checking the honor guard at Windsor Castle, forcing her to turn around the president. The photo sparked a storm on social media, as royal commentators lashed out at each other about the seriousness of the breach in diplomatic protocol.
The impromptu treatment didn’t seem to hurt Mr Trump the next time he visited in 2019. The Queen threw an extravagant state banquet at Buckingham Palace, after which the president said he and Elizabeth had “spontaneous chemistry” and that he had been told she hadn’t had a better time at Like this evening.
“She’s an amazing woman,” he told Fox News.
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