More on Michelle Obama going out of her way to insult the UK.

Sarah Brown gave Sasha and Malia Obama an outfit each from Topshop, which has just opened its first American store in New York. She also picked six children’s books by British authors which are shortly to be published in America.

But the British press has already accused the Obamas of gaffing over the gifts they gave in return. The Obamas gave the Browns two models of the presidential helicopter, Marine One, to take home to sons Fraser and John. Though Mrs Brown’s choice of gifts was praised as thoughtful, Mrs Obama’s choice of gifts for Fraser and John was ‘solipsistic’.

‘Mrs Brown may have two boys but she certainly knows the way to a little girl’s heart,’ columnist Sarah Vine wrote in the Times. ‘These were gifts chosen in the true spirit of present-giving: to please the recipient, not the giver.’

Giving the Browns’ two young boys a helicopter was ‘fair enough’, she said.

But she added: ‘Marine One? It’s not as though anyone needs reminding that Barack Obama is President or that he has his own helicopter.

‘Short of giving the boys Action Man models of her own husband smiting the evil forces of neoconservatism, Mrs Obama’s gesture could not have been more solipsistic or more inherently dismissive of Mrs Brown.