It wouldn’t be a royal visit without a garden party.
That is how King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Monday evening began their weeklong celebration of the great alliance that emerged — eventually — from the American Revolution. The garden in question was the sloping lawn of the British Embassy residence, where 600 or so of Washington’s famous and not so famous gathered, Pimm’s Cup in one hand and iPhone in the other, to catch a glimpse of, and maybe a word with, the royal couple.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was there to shake hands with the king and queen, along with Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump’s deportation program. So was Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and a host of Pentagon officials. And for a few hours there was no talk of the greatest split in British-American relations since the Suez Crisis in the mid-1950s.
The chatter was off the record, to keep the garden party more like, well, a garden party and not a news conference. Only public comments could be quoted, and there were virtually none.
But it reveals no secrets to say that members of Congress, television anchors, political consultants and reporters who only 48 hours earlier had been crouching under their banquet tables in the Washington Hilton after gunfire rang out were all snapping pictures of the royal couple. Many tried, with varying levels of success, to position themselves on the lawn for a quick conversation.
The century-old embassy residence has been the site of many such scenes, even in times of tension. Winston Churchill used to pad through its halls in his socks, and one of his paintings hangs in the library used by a succession of British ambassadors as they sought to manage the special relationship. Charles stayed in the residence 45 years ago with Diana, Princess of Wales, during their visit to Washington. With Camilla he is staying at Blair House, the official guesthouse across from the White House.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
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