It took 14 hours before any of President Bush’s folksy Texan informality had rubbed off on Gordon Brown and he finally removed his tie — but only for breakfast.

Camp David may be part presidential retreat, part golf driving range, and home of many intimate moments in the Special Relationship, but Mr Brown was determined to use the overnight visit to show off his Presbyterian work ethic.

So when he stepped out of the Sea King helicopter at 5.55pm on Sunday, he decided to ignore any entreaties to dress down and appeared ready for business, in a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie.

But the President he encountered was in a far more mischievous mood: smiling broadly, he hauled the Prime Minister into his golf buggy, “Golf Cart One”, performed a 360-degree circle for the TV cameras, waved and they sped off.

Small talk in that initial encounter did not come easily for the Prime Minister, despite his earnest study of Camp David history in preparation for the visit.

“Do you come here quite a bit?” Mr Brown was overheard asking the President after stepping off the helicopter. “I do,” Bush replied. “A lot.”

It was the start of a 24-hour visit — involving four hours of private face time — in which Mr Brown’s aides emphasised that they bonded over their mutual love of rugby and of the President’s childhood trips to Scotland, as well as discussing Iraq, Darfur, trade and the Middle East.

Standing at the podium outside a hangar in Camp David, President Bush could not have been more gracious to the incoming Prime Minister. He drew a line under remarks by Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Minister, who said the two leaders should not be “joined at the hip”.

“So everybody’s wondering whether or not the Prime Minister and I were able to find common ground, to get along, to have a meaningful discussion,” he said at the opening of the press conference. “The answer is — absolutely.”

He admitted that Mr Brown was an unknown quantity but paid tribute to his worthiness as a leader, and said he felt Mr Brown understood the ideological challenges ahead.

“You know, he — he probably wasn’t sure what to expect from me, and I — I kinda had a sense that — of the kind of person I’d be dealing with. I would describe Gordon Brown as a principled man who really wants to get something done.”

He added that he was a “problem solver”, and a “glass half-full man”.

“He’s not the dour Scotsman that you described him or the awkward Scotsman; he’s actually the humorous Scotsman, a guy that — we actually were able to relax and to share some thoughts.”

It was as close as Mr Brown could have hoped to the enthusiastic welcome President Bush had given to Mr Blair at the same spot in February 2001. “As they told me, he’s a pretty charming guy. He put the charm offensive on me. And it worked.” There was less evidence of a warm bond from Mr Brown. He thanked the President for his hospitality but offered no personal words of praise for President Bush. Instead, he took the remarkable step of referring to disagreements.

“Mr President, we have had full and frank discussions. We had the capacity and the ability to meet yesterday evening for two hours to discuss person to person some of the great issues of our time,” he said in his opening remarks. This was reinforced by the businesslike rather than friendly body language of the pair during the long walk over the grass to the podium. One source suggested that the President looked “irritated” at the end of the press conference.

Mr Brown instead chose to insist that the Special Relationship rested on shared values, history and culture rather than the bond simply between president and prime minister.

“I believe it’s a partnership that’s founded on more than common interests and more than just a common history. It’s a partnership founded and driven forward by our shared values, what Winston Churchill, who was the first British prime minister to visit Camp David, called the joint inheritance of liberty, a belief in opportunity for all, a belief in the dignity of every human being.”

While Mr Blair had turned the similar trip in 2001 into a family event, Mr Brown opted not to do the same. When Cherie Blair flew into Camp David, she is reported to have said: “I don’t expect they are looking forward to this any more than we are.” But the pair became friends, and still are.

Sarah Brown, by contrast, did not go on the trip. “There will be many more opportunities for her to go on trips like this,” said Mr Brown’s spokesman.

— A memo on talks between Tony Blair and President Bush must stay secret, the Court of Appeal has ruled, but inaccurate speculation is possible. Lawyers for media bodies including The Times had sought the overturning of a ban on reporting details of the memo, leaked by an official to an MP’s researcher. In May David Keogh and Leo O’Connor were jailed for offences under the Official Secrets Act. The trial judge, Mr Justice Aikens, banned the media from reporting details contained in the memo, which had been marked “secret” on the ground of national security.

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