When President Trump visited Scotland this week, the first official gift he received was a 1921 census record from the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, with details of his Scottish-born mother, Mary Anne, then 9 years old.
Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, also presented a document dating from 1853 that registered the marriage of Mr. Trump’s maternal great-grandparents. And there was a third gift, too: a historical map of Lewis.
In exchange, Mr. Trump gave Mr. Swinney something rather less personal: an American bald-eagle figurine. But some other diplomatic gifts in recent years have shown a greater disparity of approach. Here’s a selection of noteworthy offerings exchanged when American and British leaders have met — and a couple of examples from elsewhere in Europe, too.
1. The underwhelming gift
The most unequal exchange may have taken place in 2009, when the British prime minister was Gordon Brown. Visiting President Barack Obama in the White House, Mr. Brown presented a pen holder carved from the timbers of the Royal Navy sloop Gannet, an antislavery ship and sister vessel of the Resolute, from which the Oval Office desk was made. He also gave a first edition of a seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.
Mr. Brown got a set of DVDs.
2. The ancestral gift
Mr. Swinney was hardly the first politician to look to a president’s ancestry to find that elusive present with a personal touch.
When Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany flew to the White House in June, he took a framed version of the birth record of the president’s paternal grandfather, Friedrich, who was born in Germany in 1869.
That side of the Trump family originated in the small winemaking town of Kallstadt, which Mr. Trump’s grandfather left for the United States in 1885 — although the president speaks less about his German than Scottish heritage.
This form of flattery isn’t only reserved for the current president. The British prime minister in 2023, Rishi Sunak, tried something similar for President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Biden takes pride in his Irish heritage, but he also has a British great-great-grandfather, Christopher Biden. Mr. Sunak presented a book by him. It may not have been a page turner. The title is “Naval Discipline: Subordination Contrasted With Insubordination,” and it’s a 19th-century treatise about preventing mutinies at sea.
Mr. Sunak’s Irish counterpart, Simon Harris, perhaps found things easier. In 2024 he gave Mr. Biden silver cuff links decorated with Irish harps, a Gaelic football jersey and a letter written by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 after a visit to Ireland.
3. The Churchill-themed gift
Several leaders have used gifts to remind Mr. Trump of the bond between their countries. And for the British how better to do so than to invoke the memory of Churchill, an unwavering wartime ally whose mother was American-born?
A decade after Mr. Brown’s gift to Mr. Obama, in 2019, Theresa May, who was then the British prime minister, presented Mr. Trump with a framed draft of the Atlantic Charter, a joint statement by Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued on Aug. 14, 1941.
Queen Elizabeth II followed a similar strategy when she gave Mr. Trump a first edition of a book about World War II written in 1959 by Churchill.
On the same visit, also in 2019, Queen Elizabeth showed Mr. Trump around an exhibition of American artworks at Buckingham Palace. It included an item Mr. Trump had given her the previous July, which a royal official told British reporters the president had failed to recognize. Melania Trump, the official said, came to his rescue.
4. The short-lived gift
Not all gestures work out as planned. In 2018, President Emmanuel Macron of France arrived at the White House bearing a symbol of lasting Franco-American friendship: an oak tree from a World War I battlefield. It was planted on the South Lawn but later died and had to be replaced.
Gifts that don’t put down roots are typically turned over to the State Department, but presidents can then purchase them for an appraised value. That often makes family documents or symbolic objects an attractive choice. British politicians, too, have limits on what they can accept without paying.
5. The gift that is actually quite useful
Some objects may be more tempting to accept than others. After Mr. Brown’s White House visit in 2009, the DVDs of classic movies he was given became a favorite topic in the British news media, which gleefully reported that he couldn’t watch them because of regional playback restrictions.
Mr. Obama may have tried harder with Mr. Brown’s successor, David Cameron. At a meeting in 2012, the president offered up a handmade grill, engraved with American and British flags. Mr. Cameron’s gift in return was a table-tennis table; they had played the game when Mr. Obama visited Britain the year before.
In 2021, at a summit of leaders of the Group of 7 nations in Cornwall, England, Mr. Biden tried something similar, giving Boris Johnson — the British prime minister of the day, and a known cycling enthusiast — a hand-built bicycle.
Stephen Castle is a London correspondent of The Times, writing widely about Britain, its politics and the country’s relationship with Europe.
The post A Short History of Awkward Gift Giving Between U.S. and U.K. Leaders appeared first on New York Times.
