State visits and The Gazette: Part 7 - State Banquet
Following the state visit of the American president in 2025, in a ten-part series historian and honours expert Russell Malloch looks at the recent history of state visits in the UK. In this article, he explores visits to members of the royal family and State Banquets.
Chapters
The programme for some of the most recent state visits to the United Kingdom was altered to reflect the demise of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 (Gazette issue 63808), as Emperor Naruhito of Japan laid a wreath on her tomb in the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor in 2024, and he was followed by later visitors such as Emmanuel Macron of France and Donald Trump of the United States of America in 2025.
The relatives of the late Queen were involved in several aspects of the inward state visits of her reign, just as happened in the past. During Edward VII’s time on the throne, the visitor usually met some of the senior members of the royal family who were resident in London, and so in 1903 Emile Loubet of France visited the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House, then went to Portman Square to see the Duchess of Fife, to Clarence House to meet the Duke of Connaught, and so on.
Family visits
The practice of conducting brief visits to members of the royal family was maintained during George V’s reign, as when Crown Prince Hirohito of Japan met the Prince of Wales at St James’s Palace, before paying his respects at the grave of the Unknown Warrior. In due course, George VI’s Court Circulars showed that King Leopold of Belgium visited the king’s mother, Queen Mary, at Marlborough House in 1937, which was a feature of the state visit timetable that was last noted in the Circular when King Haakon of Norway came to London in June 1951.
A similar royal family schedule was put in place after Elizabeth II’s succession to the crown, as the first visitor of her reign, King Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, met the Queen’s mother at Clarence House on the day of his arrival in 1954. The practice of meeting the Queen Mother continued at Clarence House for state visits based at Buckingham Palace, and at the Royal Lodge for Windsor Castle events (which started with Giuseppe Saragat of Italy in 1969).
There were rare exceptions to the Clarence House and Royal Lodge excursions, which happened during the visit of Eduardo Frei of Chile in 1965, as the Queen Mother was in Germany, performing engagements with units of the British Army of the Rhine, or when she was in Warwick when Abdou Diouf of Senegal arrived in 1988. The last visit to the Queen Mother took place in November 2001, when King Abdullah of Jordan went to the Royal Lodge, only a few months before her death at the age of 101.
A revised system of family visits was reflected in the Court Circular in 2010, when Emir Hamad of Qatar met Charles, Prince of Wales, and the Duchess of Cornwall at their London residence. Several similar meetings took place during later state visits and were reported in the Court Circular before the prince succeeded to the crown in 2022. His Clarence House visitors included Enrique Nieto of Mexico and Xi Jinping of China in 2015, while Donald Trump had tea with the prince in 2019.
The most recent change in personnel came in 2024, when Emir Tamim of Qatar saw Wiliam, Prince of Wales, at his home at Kensington Palace, on the day of the emir’s formal entry into London.
State Banquet
As well as meeting monarchs and presidents at home, senior members of the royal family usually attended the main event of every state visit, which was the banquet that was given by the sovereign in honour of their guest, and was usually held in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace, or in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle.
The Court Circular reported the ceremonial from the Edwardian period onwards, including the usual presence of a detachment of the Yeomen of the Guard in the banqueting room, a military band playing a selection of music, and pipers of the Scots Guards.
The British and foreign insignia that had recently been exchanged was often displayed in public for the first time during the banquet, with photographs being taken of the sovereign wearing the riband, star and/or collar of the foreign order, while many presidents wore their red riband, badge and star of the Order of the Bath, and royal visitors appeared with the blue riband and star of the Garter, and/or the Royal Victorian Chain.
The guest list for the banquet typically included members of the foreign suite and embassy, as well as the British suite attached to the head of state, along with ambassadors and high commissioners from foreign and Commonwealth nations.
The invitations for the first state banquet of George VI’s reign in 1937 included:
- the archbishop of Canterbury
- the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, together with one of his predecessors at 10 Downing Street, David Lloyd George, and two of his successors, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee
- the chancellor of the Exchequer
- the secretaries of state and their ministers
- the lord chancellor
- the lord chief justice
- the speaker of the House of Commons
- the earl marshal
- the governor of the Bank of England
- the chiefs of the armed forces
- other members of the reception party from Victoria Station, such as the lord mayor of London and the Metropolitan police commissioner
- members of the royal household
The guest list sometimes recalled earlier diplomatic links with the visitor’s nation, with former ambassadors being invited, as with King Leopold of Belgium’s visit in 1937, which included the Earl Granville (Gazette issue 33417) and Sir George Clerk, two former ambassadors at Brussels, as well as the current holder of that position, Sir Robert Clive.
Similar invitations were sent to former ambassadors and high commissioners during Elizabeth II’s reign, as in 1971 when Sir Oscar Morland (Gazette issue 41748) and Sir Francis Rundall came to the banquet for Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Links with earlier days were also noticed in 1963 for Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, whose guest list included the widows of two former viceroys of India, the Countess of Halifax and the Countess Wavell (Gazette issue 36193).
The invitations were adjusted to take account of social and political changes, with a marked reduction in the number of government ministers, and the loss of the earl marshal and some of the other “great and the good”, while the diplomatic corps fell out of favour during Elizabeth II’s reign.
The banquet for Charles de Gaulle of France in 1960 saw invitations being sent to 16 ambassadors and high commissioners, from countries such as Germany, India and the United States of America. A generation later, the list was often restricted to the dean or doyen of the diplomatic corps, and two or three ambassadors, usually from neighbouring countries. In 2003, for example, the American president George Bush was joined by the doyen and only three other diplomats, with places being allocated to the Canadian high commissioner and the Mexican ambassador, while the three representatives who were invited to Barak Obama’s state banquet in 2011 also favoured Canada and Mexico.
The reduction in the foreign diplomatic presence banquets was evident at the start of the 21st century, as only one ambassador was invited to dine with Donald Trump, with Kuwait being asked in 2019, and Honduras in 2025. Both the Kuwaiti and Honduran ambassadors were present as the doyen of the diplomatic corps in the United Kingdom.
Another change that occurred during Elizabeth II’s reign was the allocation of places to representatives from organisations that shared cultural, commercial and/or political links with the United Kingdom and the visitor’s nation.
A major part of many state visits was the promotion of commercial relations, and while the old guest lists routinely included the governor of the Bank of England, very few business representatives attended the event before the Queen’s reign. The earliest hint that a change was taking place came in the Court Circular in 1959, when the guests for the Shah of Iran’s visit included the chairman of British Petroleum, and the managing director of English Electric Company.
There was an increased emphasis in recent years to engage with the business and financial communities, and Donald Trump’s 2025 visit reflected a pronounced shift by comparison with 2019. The guests for his second banquet saw the familiar governor of the Bank of England, but now with colleagues from organisations such as the Bank of America, Black Rock and Citigroup; senior officers from major domestic groups such as BAE Systems, BP and Rolls-Royce, and the chief executive officer of technology entities such as Apple, Google and Microsoft.
Toasts
The seating arrangement for the banquet placed the sovereign beside the monarch or president, and with their spouses sitting together, who heard a welcome speech, ending with a toast to the visitor given by the sovereign, and a speech and toast in reply.
The general tone of the proceedings can be gauged from one of the late Queen’s earliest state banquet speeches, which was drafted for Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1954, during the premiership of Sir Winston Churchill:
“We greet you as the sovereign of an ancient Christian state which has many links with our own church and with the other Christian churches of the world.
We greet you also as the sovereign of the country which was the first to regain its freedom during the last war. Under your majesty’s inspiring leadership, the Ethiopian people have made truly remarkable progress in the years that have followed the war.
I am very proud of the part that my country played in the liberation of Ethiopia, together with your own patriotic forces. In those war-time days close bonds of friendship were forged between our two countries and between the men of our armies who fought together side by side. It is my sincere wish, as I know it is your majesty’s, that this friendship should be preserved and strengthened in the days of peace.
Your majesty is no stranger to this country. When your own land was invaded you came here and I would like to think that in England you will always feel at home. […]
I am so glad that your majesty will remain here for a short time after your state visit is over. You will then have some opportunity of travelling about the country and seeing various aspects of our national life. I know that you will receive a great welcome wherever you go. My people will be anxious to pay tribute to a sovereign who has brought freedom to his country in time of war and prosperity and enlightenment in time of peace.
Your imperial majesty, in the spirit of friendship and of those common ideals under which we thrive and prosper, I raise my glass to drink to your health, to that of the empress, and to the prosperity and happiness of the Ethiopian people.”
In responding, Haile Selassie referred to the welcome he received in England during a European tour in 1924:
“Since that event, thirty years ago, my recollections have been, throughout the ensuing years, nourished in the memories of the hospitality of your royal family and of the friendship and affection of the British people during the long years of bitter and enforced absence from our homeland. The friendship of the royal house and of the British people alone sustained me and my people in our lonely struggles.
Such friendship and loyalty have earned our imperishable gratitude and friendship. Your support and the loyalty of the British people whose sons fell at the side of our sons on the soil of our homeland in defence of the just cause and for the liberation of our country make today, the preservation and strengthening of that friendship and affection a sacred trust. […]
I raise my glass in a toast to her Majesty the Queen, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh and to the prosperity and happiness of the British people.”
The 1954 speeches show the shadows of shared history that were often cast over state visits, as Haile Selassie referred to the military campaign that Italy had waged against Ethiopia in the 1930s, and to his forced exile in England. Three years after entertaining the emperor, the government of Harold Macmillan took a decision that obliged the Queen to welcome the president of Italy, the nation that had not only invaded Ethiopia, but had also sided with Hitler during the war (Gazette issue 34871).
The Queen’s speech for President Gronchi referred to “the debt which we owe to those Roman colonizers who first brought our country within the limits of the civilized world”, as well as “the cultural debt that not only we but all Europe owes to the achievement of the Italian Renaissance”. The only reference to the recent war was the knowledge the Italian people gained from the thousands of British troops who fought for a free Italy, and the “help given to escaping British prisoners of war by Italians of all classes, often at great risk to themselves.”
Even more difficult were the political negotiations that preceded the decision to invite Theodor Heuss of Germany in 1958, given that the second world war had ended only 13 years earlier. The press reported that London welcomed the first German leader since Emperor William in 1907 “with courteous respect, and probably sympathy, rather than with popular enthusiasm”, while the Queen referred to her German family connections and said:
“nothing can ever erase from the record certain deeds and events perpetrated in Europe within our memory. But their most important significance today is as a warning and an example to the whole world of what can happen when democracy breaks down. It is in that spirit that we are working together to rebuild true friendship between our two countries. It is my fervent hope that this visit will prove to be another important step to that end.”
The last of the war-time enemies was Japan, and the government of Edward Heath took the step of inviting Emperor Hirohito. He did so in October 1971, as part of the first foreign tour by a Japanese emperor, which began in Alaska, where he met the American president Richard Nixon, and then proceeded on formal visits to Denmark and Belgium and a private visit to France, before making further state visits to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and West Germany.
On this occasion the Queen said: “We cannot pretend that the relations between our two peoples have always been peaceful and friendly. However, it is precisely this experience which should make us all the more determined never to let it happen again. Your Majesty’s own actions and example since the dark days of 1945 make it only too obvious that you are dedicated to peace and friendship”. The message of hope has held good, and three emperors have paid state visits to the United Kingdom since 1971.
The imperial trip was one of the most controversial of the inward state visits, with protests being made by war veterans and others. One former prisoner of war noted that Hirohito sanctioned the attack on Pearl Harbour with no declaration of war (Gazette issue 35383), and surrendered when faced with certain defeat in a war which Japan had started, and thought that it was not unlike asking Hitler to make an official visit, had he been allowed to live.
Similar political considerations exist today in terms of the government’s decision whether or not to promote a state visit. The international landscape continues to evolve, and so the invitations that led to Ezer Weizman of Israel and Vladimir Putin of Russia being welcomed by the Queen during the Blair administration are unlikely to be matched by the Starmer government, not least because of Israeli and Russian involvement in military operations in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Bath insignia
An earlier article, which dealt with the link between the Order of the Bath and the office of prime minister, commented on the use of insignia by a future prime minister:
‘Sir Keir Starmer did not wear his Bath badge and star or miniature at Buckingham Palace on 25 June 2024 when, as leader of the Opposition, he attended the state banquet for Emperor Naruhito of Japan, an event at which insignia was worn by the majority of the King’s other guests. It is a matter of conjecture, although one of little political significance, as to whether the new prime minister will give his civil KCB a more prominent place in public affairs during the course of his premiership.’
It is now possible to report that as prime minister, Sir Keir gave no more prominence to his KCB than he did as leader of the Opposition, as he dined with Donald Trump in 2025 without the benefit of any Bath insignia, although this was the order’s tercentenary year, and in the presence of King Charles who wore his sovereign’s diamond studded neck badge and breast star of the Bath.
Succession to the Crown: From Charles II to Charles III
Succession to the Crown is essential reading for anyone with a keen interest in the British royal family and provides an excellent and trusted source of information for historians, researchers and academics alike. The book takes you on a journey exploring the coronations, honours and emblems of the British monarchy, from the demise of King Charles II in 1685, through to the accession of King Charles III, as recorded in The London Gazette.
Historian Russell Malloch tells the story of the Crown through trusted, factual information found in the UK's official public record. Learn about the traditions and ceremony engrained in successions right up to the demise of Queen Elizabeth II and the resulting proclamation and accession of King Charles III.
Available to order now from the TSO Shop.
About the author
Russell Malloch is a member of the Orders and Medals Research Society and an authority on British honours. He authored Succession to the Crown: From Charles II to Charles III, which explores the coronations, honours and emblems of the British monarchy.
See also
Demise of the Crown: #1: An introduction
The Order of The Bath: Prime ministerial K.C.B.s
Find out more
Succession to the Crown: - From Charles II to Charles III (TSO shop)
Images
- Photograph showing Sheikh Khalifa Bin Hamad Al-Thani, Amir of Qatar (b. 1932) (left) talking to Queen Elizabeth II (right) before a State Banquet held in the Ballroom at Buckingham Palace. The Amir was making a four day State Visit to Britain. (Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2026)
- President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attend a State Banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in London, England, May 24, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
- Group photograph taken on the occasion of the State Banquet at Buckingham Palace. (l-r): The Duke of Edinburgh; Queen Mother; Empress Nagako; Emperor Hirohito and HM the Queen. The Banquet marked the end of the first day of the State visit. (Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2026)
- The Gazette
Publication date
3 March 2026
Any opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and the author alone, and does not necessarily represent that of The Gazette.