FORTY-six years ago today tiny Bermuda was the focus of the world's attention for the start of the historic two-day John Kennedy/Harold Macmillan Big Two summit meeting held at Government House. December 21, 1961 saw US President John F. Kennedy arrive at Kindley Air Force Base to meet with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan about foreign and nuclear policy, the third pair of Anglo-American heads of state to convene on our shores.

Bermuda's role in modern Anglo-American affairs began in the early days of the Second World War. In a special adjunct to the Destroyers-For-Bases Deal - in which Britain ceded land for military fortifications in its West Indian territories and Newfoundland to the still-neutral US in exchange for much-needed warships -Prime Minister Winston Churchill also agreed to lease land here to the Americans for 99 years. The deal gave birth to the nations' much-vaunted "Special Relationship" and resulted in US military presence on the island for the next half-century.

Following this exchange, Bermuda became the obvious location for future meetings between the waning superpower and its successor due to its fortuitous placement - a British territory a stone's throw from the US mainland, on which the US had a military presence. In fact Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt were due to meet here in 1944 in the run-up to the Allied D-Day landings but what would have been the first US/UK summit meeting in Bermuda was abruptly cancelled when FDR was felled by the first of a series of heart attacks that would kill him in 1945.

Speaking of Bermuda's strategic importance before the US entered the war in 1941, President Roosevelt said of the island: "If Bermuda fell into hostile hands, it would be a matter of less than three hours for hostile bombers to reach our shores."

In 1953, eight years after the fall of Fascism, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's death in March prompted Churchill to call a meeting with his American counterpart, the newly elected Dwight D. Eisenhower. Churchill wrote to him, "I wonder if this (Stalin's death) makes a difference to your view about separate approaches to the new regime or whether there is a possibility of collective action."

Their meeting in December 1953 took place in Bermuda, with the other member of the wartime Big Three, French Premier Joseph Laniel. Churchill coined the term "summit" about this conference, in hope of a long and peaceable collaboration resulting. His biographer Sir Martin Gilbert explained, "At Bermuda, Churchill tried to build 'a path to the summit' which, as he envisaged it, would also have been a path to world peace."

Cambridge University's Allen Packwood said on the 50th anniversary of the first Bermuda summit in 2003, "This small island did have one thing going for it. Location. Here was a tiny part of the British Empire within 580 miles of North Carolina. To a Prime Minister intent upon forging and maintaining an alliance with the US, Bermuda provided both a useful stepping stone and a local base for entertaining Americans on home soil."

The four days of talks were held at the Mid Ocean Club, where Eisenhower attempted to pressure France into allowing Germany a role in defending the west against Communist Eastern Europe, and Churchill tried to woo the US into allocating resources to the defense of the Suez Canal. The talks were not wholly successful, highlighting the differences in the US and Britain's approach to the new Soviet leadership: Churchill wished to open a dialogue with Russia; Eisenhower did not.

Bermuda has subsequently been the scene of US-UK dialogues a further five times, the last of which was between George Bush Sr. and John Major in 1991, two years after the end of the Cold War, following the allied defeat of Saddam Hussein in Kuwait.

It was again at the Mid Ocean Club that strained Anglo-American relations were resolved in 1957 following the Suez Crisis. Washington had disapproved of Britain's deployment of troops to secure the strategically significant Canal, co-owned by Britain and France, which had been nationalised the year before by Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser.

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had taken office in the midst of the Crisis following the abrupt resignation of Suez architect Antony Eden. Macmillan told the Queen he could not guarantee his administration would last "six weeks." Though Eisenhower arranged the meeting, Macmillan asserted that Britain would be the host. Bermuda's relaxed surroundings and the Mid Ocean Club's genteel charm no doubt had a conciliatory effect on proceedings:

"We are all together in a fine building on the same passage - it is like living in a country house together with fellow guests," Macmillan said of the meeting.

On the table as well as Suez was the deployment of American-made nuclear arms in England, a deal that was signed 11 months later.

Macmillan quickly put the ghosts of Eden and Suez behind him and proved to be a popular leader with the British people. He would return to the island in December 1961 - the height of the Cold War - to meet with John F. Kennedy, to whom he said in greeting: "The task which occupies us now (is) the strengthening of our friendship to preserve the peace of the world."

The Kennedy-Macmillan talks centered on "the question of Berlin, on nuclear problems and on the situation in the Congo," according to a joint statement issued at their conclusion. "The talks will form the basis of continued United States-United Kingdom cooperation during the coming months on a great variety of questions."

Following the construction of the Berlin Wall earlier that year, the President and Prime Minister discussed the arms race in depth, but only managed a sole resolution to "maintain the effectiveness of the deterrent" by renewing atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

An article in Time Magazine on December 28, 1961 reported the limited scope for more profound commitment: "Sitting in Hamilton's pale pink Government House, Kennedy and Macmillan conversed for as long as five hours at a stretch - with only a few minutes out for tea - but, inevitably, they were able to produce little in the way of hard solutions to the world's woes. Kennedy and Macmillan reviewed the current rash of trouble spots - Goa, the Congo, South Vietnam, Netherlands, New Guinea - but they soon settled down to the continuing, fundamental problem of how to meet the Russian threat against Berlin."

Though under pressure from British voters to adopt a "Ban the Bomb" position, in Bermuda Macmillan endorsed the resumption of American atmospheric nuclear tests as a consequence of Soviet nuclear sabre-rattling.

Perhaps more enduringly famous than the summit's feats of policy is JFK's purported brag to the elderly Macmillan at Government House, recounted in Richard Reeves' 1994 biography President Kennedy: Profile of Power, "I wonder how it is with you, Harold? If I don't have a woman for three days, I get terrible headaches."

A personal special relationship between Macmillan and the young American leader was cemented in Bermuda. It went deeper than mere strategic or economic symbiosis, with the Prime Minister saying, "I was a sort of son to Ike, and it was the other way round with Kennedy."

Bermuda seemingly provided the perfect haven of isolation where personal as well as international bonds could flourish between the leaders of two of the 20th century's great powers.