The Great Destabilization by Mark Steyn on National Review Online

The Great Destabilization

"British prime minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. Barack Obama is the first African-American president, so the prime minister gave him an ornamental desk-pen holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy’s anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President. The president’s guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office. And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Gordon Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill."

In return, America’s head of state gave the prime minister 25 DVDs of “classic American movies.”

I'm really curious whether Obama even gave Brown DVDs that can be played in England. (American Region 1 DVDs can't be popped into British DVD players, and an American DVD player doesn't send the right format to a British TV.)

At any rate, I really hope one of the DVDs was "King Ralph."