Jimmy Carter and Queen Elizabeth II's Glittering State Banquet Moment

In the spring of 1977, President Carter joined several other heads of state for a special dinner at Buckingham Palace hosted by Queen Elizabeth II

Jimmy Carter, who served as President of the United States from 1977 until 1981, died last week at the remarkable age of 100. Today, I’ve got a closer look at one of the most interesting foreign trips taken during the first months of his administration: a visit to London for the G7 Summit, including a very royal state dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and President Jimmy Carter at Buckingham Palace on May 7, 1977 (PA Images/Alamy)

The Duke of Edinburgh was waiting on the steps outside the courtyard entrance to Buckingham Palace when the presidential limousine pulled up on the evening of Saturday, May 7, 1977. Jimmy Carter, the newly-inaugurated American president, stepped out of the car and approached the Duke with a broad smile, shaking his hand firmly. Philip was no stranger to American heads of state. Since his marriage to the future Elizabeth II in 1947, he had met every single one of them. He and Elizabeth had met President Truman in Washington during their first visit to the United States in 1951. They had also stayed at the White House six years later while visiting President Eisenhower, and Ike had stayed with the Windsors at Balmoral in the summer of 1959.

The Kennedys had famously come to dinner at Buckingham Palace in 1961. When President Kennedy was assassinated two years later, Philip flew to Washington to represent the family at the state funeral. (Elizabeth, expecting Prince Edward, was too pregnant to travel.) During a reception at the State Department, Philip offered a sympathetic hand to President Johnson, the only American president that his wife didn’t meet during her long reign. The Nixons visited the UK and met with the Queen and the Duke in 1970, and six years later, Elizabeth and Philip returned to Washington for a bicentennial visit with his successor, Gerald Ford.

Now, it was Jimmy Carter’s turn to represent his country in a meeting with Britain’s monarch and her family. President Carter was in Britain that May for the G7 summit, a meeting with six fellow heads of state and government. At No. 10 Downing Street, Prime Minister James Callaghan acted as host for the meeting with President Carter, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing of France, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti of Italy, and Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda of Japan. Roy Jenkins, the president of the European Commission, was also present for the meetings, which discussed a range of topics including unemployment, human rights concerns, and nuclear exports.