I have hazy and faintly painful memories of meeting Andrew Roberts at a stag night. I’m pretty sure that shotguns and at least one stately home were involved, while half of those present now seem to be on the Tory front bench. What can I say? They seemed like nice boys at the time.

Roberts was — and I suppose still is — one of the bright young Conservative set that spawned David Cameron. They went out with the same girl, Laura Adshead, after leaving university and, on holiday together in the South of France, the future Tory leader demonstrated his “physical courage” by rescuing Roberts from a menacing jellyfish.

Since staring death in the face on that day, Roberts has emerged as a British historian with a famous fan. Last month he was invited to the White House for an intimate “literary luncheon” with President Bush, who has been hailing his latest work as a “great book” and posting off copies to his friends, including Tony Blair.

The meal ended with Bush apparently feeling “revved up” by his discussion with the author of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, a book intended as a follow-up to Winston Churchill’s four-volume work. It places the current conflict with “Totalitarian Islamic Terrorist Fascism” in a sequence of mortal threats to Anglo-American freedoms alongside Nazi Germany and Communist Russia.

At their lunch together, Roberts advised the President to remain steadfast in the face of the antiAmericanism abroad and faint-hearts at home. A “steady drumbeat of media pessimism” is sapping the West’s strength, he said, just as the Romans and other rich world powers fell to poorer ones because they lacked the will to survive.

But what about his old friend Cameron? Well, according to an account of the meeting written by the economist Irwin Stelzer, Roberts said that the Tory leader could not really be trusted.

For all his heroics with the jellyfish a dozen years ago, Cameron has not yet been brave enough to turn up in Washington. Indeed, it is now 1,746 days since a leader of the Conservative Party set foot in the US capital, the longest such absence since the advent of jet travel.

And, while Roberts is fêted at the White House for writing about a special relationship forged by past Tory leaders, Cameron is regarded with barely concealed hostility by most Republicans who have heard of him.

Last February William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that he was sure a meeting between Cameron and President Bush would “take place later in the year”. Thirteen months later, we are still waiting.

Since then the Tory leader has particularly upset the Bush Administration by using a speech on the anniversary of 9/11 last year to attack Britain’s “slavish” bond with the US. Such talk is seen as political opportunism designed to appeal to antiAmerican, or at least antiBush, tendencies back in the UK.

It is a continuation of the confrontational policy pursued by his predecessor, Michael Howard, who claimed in 2004 that he was not welcome at the White House because of criticisms he had made about the war. Karl Rove, the President’s closest adviser, professes to be mystified by UK reports of this alleged snub. He suggests that the row was manufactured back at Tory HQ.

There are plenty of Conservatives who feel unhappy about Cameron’s position towards Bush. One is even rumoured to have apologised to a senior State Department official on a recent trip over here. But even they must accept that keeping a distance from the electorally toxic Bush makes a certain amount of sense in the short term.

In his final years of office, the President seems intent on wrapping himself in the comforting folds of history — when other British and US war leaders defied the doubters — so tightly that he might think he was cut from the same cloth as a Lincoln or a Churchill. At his lunch with Roberts, he dismissed suggestions that the unpopularity of the war might damage a special relationship which, he said, was “unbelievably powerful”, transcending differences between any president and prime minister.

But you don’t have to be in Washington for long as a journalist to realise how little Britain matters on any aspect of US policy. Even Democrats who bang on about rebuilding international alliances do not bother to return calls from the foreign press.

Blair has been crushed by the weight of disappointed expectations that Bush might one day deliver on the Middle East peace process, climate change, even opening up US airspace to foreign competition.

There is no doubt that Bush is grateful for Blair’s support in Iraq and even feels a bit guilty about how much damage he has done to him. But he ignores Blair’s wishes simply because he can. America likes having allies but is big enough not to need them — and that will not change whoever wins the White House after Bush.

Meanwhile, the US Administration is preparing for Blair’s departure from the international stage by strengthening its links with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. And that, presumably, is something that worries both Cameron and Roberts.

Blame it on Dick’s dicky ticker

A cheery presence at the literary lunch for Roberts was Vice-President Dick Cheney, who took the history book on his recent trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where, as usual, he managed to upset most people he met before suffering a blood clot on his leg.

An article, perhaps even more charmless than Cheney himself, in the relaunched New Republic magazine this week cites some medical research into dementia and cardiovascular disease as (fairly flimsy) evidence that his four heart attacks may have left him suffering from a psychiatric disorder. Symptoms apparently include shortness of temper, mood swings and a reduced ability to solve complex problems. The article seeks to answer one of the most oft-asked questions in Washington: what exactly happened to Cheney, a man hand-picked by President Bush Sr to be the sensible grown-up in the Administration but who turned out to be a stone-faced hawk who, during the recent State of the Union address, appeared to have lost even the ability to blink. “Next time you see Cheney behaving oddly,” writes Michelle Cottle, “don’t automatically assume that he’s a bad man” — he could just be sick.

Gordon who?

As the guests sat down to lunch with Roberts, Cheney was asked if America’s relationship with Britain would change when Gordon Brown takes over in Downing Street. In what counts as one of his longer sentences, he replied: “I really don't know much about Brown.”

If Britain’s relationship with the US matters as much as everyone says it does, you might think that he would have bothered to find out.

Tom Baldwin is Washington Bureau Chief of The Times

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