An unforgettable afternoon with the perfect gentleman

When Andrew Buncombe interviewed Jimmy Carter, it was unusual for former presidents to criticise their successors

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The thing that sticks in my mind - even now - was the welcoming eyes and the warm smile. He stretched out his hand to offer it in greeting and said something along the measure of: “Thanks for coming down to see us.”

Jimmy Carter was always known as a gentleman, a farmer from Georgia who had held the most powerful political office in the world. But it did not seem forced, it did not seem an act.

I’d flown to the offices of The Carter Center in Atlanta to interview him about his latest book, The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War. He’d written plenty of books – he would go on to author more than 30 – but this was his first novel, one that the publisher Simon & Schuster described as “a sweeping novel of the American South and the War of Independence.”

The publisher had said: “With its moving love story, vivid action, and the suspense of a war fought with increasing ferocity and stealth, The Hornet’s Nest is historical fiction at its best, in the tradition of such major classics as The Last of the Mohicans.”

In truth, the novel had been a bit slow going, packed dense with historical detail, but when The Independent received the chance to talk about it, we leaped.

It was March 2004, a full year since George W Bush and Tony Blair launched the invasion of Iraq, sending the West’s military on what would be a disastrous and deadly war based on concocted claims and lies about Saddam Hussein’s purported arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

We hoped the former president might be persuaded to comment. His office made clear he only wished to talk about the novel, but either way, it was going to be a chance to meet and talk to someone who had probably been more active once they left the White House than any other modern president.