Days before President Trump was due to open the new US embassy in London in January, he tweeted that he was abandoning the trip, dubbing the move from Mayfair to Vauxhall a “bad deal”.

No one was more disappointed than Robert ‘Woody’ Johnson, the US ambassador to the UK, who is a good friend of the president.

“You accept the reality you’re given,” says Johnson. “But it’s like anything else: we’re going to make the best of it and we’re going to be very enthusiastic.”

The episode was yet another example of the tension that has been building between the US and UK since Trump’s inauguration.

Two months prior to the cancellation, Trump was ticked off by Theresa May for sharing tweets from the far-Right Britain First group that claimed to show videos of “Muslims beating up a Dutch boy on crutches”, but were in fact fake.

Trump, in turn, has grown frustrated with Theresa May’s “school mistress” tone, allies of the president told The Telegraph earlier this month.

But although some believe Anglo-American relations have reached a nadir, Trump’s team in London is enthusiastic in its belief that the special relationship is alive and kicking.

Ahead of the president’s first trip to London on July 13 – which is expected to attract large-scale demonstrations – a Channel 4 series called Inside the American Embassy was given unprecedented access to Johnson and his band of London-based Brexiteers’ first months in office, toiling to improve Trump’s reputation in the UK.