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This formal dinner represents the spectacular highlight of a official trip, a opulent feast featuring addresses, formal greetings, musical flourishes and exquisite food and wine.

This is statecraft presented with gourmet meals. A polished impressive approach to hospitality meant to make a visiting leader experience grandeur.

The setting in St George's Hall inside the historic castle is a remarkable sight, a blend of medieval banquet and Harry Potter film.

Elaborately uniformed staff around the hall are as disciplined as the troops that were on parade during the day. The place arrangements, multiple stemware for each guest, are impressively neat.

Culinary Offerings

For the visit, the 160 guests, sitting behind 1,452 pieces of cutlery, are served from a menu, presented in the French language, which includes:

• Hampshire Watercress Panna Cotta accompanied by cheese crisps and miniature egg dish
• Organic Norfolk chicken ballotine wrapped in courgettes with a herb-infused jus
• Vanilla ice cream bombe containing Kentish raspberry sorbet interior and lightly poached seasonal fruits

Attendees enjoy a extensive wine list:

• English sparkling, Blend, Vintage
• Estate white, Corton-Charlemagne, Year
• California red, Vineyard, Millennium vintage
• Pol Roger, Extra Cuvée de Réserve, 1998

After-dinner drinks are rich with meaning. It's a 1945 vintage port, marking the 45th US president, even though he does not drink alcohol.

There's also a century-old brandy, from the year of birth of the president's Scotland-native mother.

For an extra touch, there's a signature drink, the International sour mix, which blends Scotch whisky with the zesty flavor of marmalade, topped with nutty froth and a caramelized confection atop a cookie.

Guest List

The banquet is conspicuously missing celebrity faces or Hollywood figures. Did some people in the entertainment industry who suddenly found they were needed elsewhere?

Absent are hardy royal perennial faces like Sir David Beckham or Sir Elton John.

Rather, the guest list is filled with political operators and tech bros. Apple boss the Apple leader is there, seated beside the president's daughter Tiffany Trump.

Press baron Rupert Murdoch is sitting next to Sir Keir Starmer's top strategist Morgan McSweeney. The small talk is likely engaging given current lawsuits.

Similar to nuptials, guests are surely glancing at the seating cards along the elaborately set table to identify who they're sitting beside.

The "head" of the table is in the middle for the castle dinner, with the monarch and president in the centre of a dining table that is over 150 feet in length.

The visiting leader, as the honored invitee, is seated alongside King Charles and the princess, the royal consort.

Across from them is the first lady, whose nameplate that says "Mrs Trump", with the queen consort and the Prince of Wales on both sides.

Placement at the table throws some interesting groupings. There's the diplomatic representative the envoy flanked by the royal princess on one side and the finance minister on the other.

The head of government Sir Keir Starmer is next to Stephen Schwarzman billionaire chief of the Blackstone group.

If Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is seeking inspiration, she's beside Sam Altman, head of the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI.

The US Secretary of State the senator is present and the representative Steve Witkoff. From the British government the diplomat the minister and the deputy David Lammy are there.

Golfer the champion and athlete Dame Kathleen Grainger are among the well-known sports stars at the banquet.

Throughout the hall are royal portraits and knight's armor and the overhead is adorned by the coats of arms of royal order members.

St George's Hall was restored after the 1992 blaze. So perhaps as with tales about the royals, it seems both modern and historic at the once.

According to the travelling US press pack, the choice of music at the banquet includes some of the leader's preferred tunes. Maybe they have their own messages to the dignitaries listening.

The playlist features the operatic aria, which translates as "none shall sleep" and You Can't Always Get What You Want.