A gift for causing offence…

You don't even know what you did wrong, do you?

International relations is fraught with danger at the best of times, but perhaps the most awkward gaffes occur when presenting diplomatic gifts. These presents have to be just right: valuable but not gaudy, meaningful but not obvious… and sometimes things go horribly, horribly wrong.

During his recent visit to the US, Obama opted to give Gordon Brown a box-set of 25 classic American movies and a couple of toy helicopters from the White House gift shop. This might have been seen as a cheap and thoughtless gift at the best of times, but it gets worse: the DVDs were Region 1 encoded, and so were completely unplayable in the UK…

Well, never mind, Gordon probably didn’t put too much effort into his gift either…

Think again: he presented President Obama with an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet. The oak from the Gannet’s sister ship, HMS Resolute, was carved into a desk that has been displayed in the White House since 1880. And that’s not all. Mr. Brown also gave President Obama a framed commission for HMS Resolute – a ship that came to symbolise Anglo-American friendship – and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.

When a public relations furore kicked off, a senior White House official didn’t help by saying to The Sunday Telegraph: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.” Now that’s diplomacy!

Here are some other classic failures of diplomatic gifting:

• In 2006, the Sultan of Brunei gave tongue-tied President Bush Forgotten English, a game for improving your vocabulary.
• Hilary Clinton gave a red button marked “reset” to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as a light-hearted gesture to symbolise the thawing of relations. Unfortunately, her staff had mistranslated the word and it actually meant “overcharge”.
• George W again. This time he received a high-powered assault rifle and a copy of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook from Gabon. Very appropriate at the time!