For Americans, the Queen was the ultimate celebrity | Hadley Freeman

From the first days of her reign, Elizabeth was seen as a character out of a fairytale

Back in May 2012, Barack and Michelle Obama made a state visit to the UK that involved the usual photo-friendly rigmarole such as wreath-laying and Beefeater-inspecting. They also spent the night at Buckingham Palace and attended a state dinner in their honour where Obama gave a short speech and toast to the Queen. Journalists, however, noticed something unusual about the man who is one of the most eloquent politicians of all time: he was nervous.

You could really see that he seemed a bit anxious," recalled Max Foster, CNN's royal correspondent. But if the Obamas displayed characteristic American hesitancy about royal protocol, they also shared that equally typical American sentiment in having an enormous fondness for the Queen. According to Foster, Obama later told the US ambassador that his visits to Britain were among his favourite trips abroad.