America’s firebrand president will sit down with Queen Elizabeth for tea at Windsor Castle tomorrow - a meeting to which many would love to be privy.
The encounter is expected to last for less than an hour, and is said to be a meeting that Donald Trump has long desired. He will be the 12th US president the Queen has met since taking the throne.
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Trump and his wife Melania will shake hands with the 92-year-old monarch when they meet at the Berkshire castle.
The official royal website advises that men may also bow their heads, and women do a small curtsy, if they want to observe traditional protocol.
“On presentation to The Queen, the correct formal address is ‘Your Majesty’ and subsequently ‘Ma’am’, pronounced with a short ‘a’, as in ‘jam’,” the site says, but adds that “there are no obligatory codes of behaviour when meeting the Queen”.
A Guard of Honour, formed of the Coldstream Guards, will give a Royal Salute and the US national anthem will be played, before the trio go in for tea.
The president was initially due to visit the UK last year, and had apparently hoped for a round of golf at Balmoral Castle with Her Majesty. “Mr Trump’s team want to create a photograph opportunity to rival the famous images of President Ronald Reagan horse riding with the Queen at Windsor Castle when he visited in the 1982,” said The Daily Telegraph at the time. Trump’s planned state visit was postponed, however, and then downgraded to a “working visit” this year.
The US leader has previously said that his mother, Mary MacLeod, who emigrated from the isle of Lewis to New York in 1930, was a “big fan” of Queen Elizabeth.
Former FBI director James Comey, who was fired from his position by Trump last year, has suggested that the Queen will not need to prepare a lot of material for the meeting.
“It’s about him and most importantly about you agreeing that either his speech was the best, his approach is the best, that he is the best, and it’s this effort to fill a hole that’s remarkable – the need for affirmation,” Comey told London-based radio station LBC last month.
“So the Queen, I suppose, will have things ready to say, but I’m not sure how much she’ll get to say.”
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