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His father Thorvald was Norway’s foreign minister and a peace broker who staged “kitchen table diplomacy” in the Sixties and Seventies. He told today’s Desert Island Discs said: “I thought it was an absolutely normal thing to have freedom fighters at the kitchen table early in the morning, and some of them slept over. “Nelson Mandela came to that kitchen table and sat there and we were able as children and later on as young people to meet all these political leaders from all around the world.

“My father had this idea of bringing people into his private house and then serving them breakfast was the best way to conduct diplomacy. “The reality was the breakfast was not very impressive, it was Norwegian mackerel and then some brown cheese.”

Years later Mr Mandela – attending a concert held in his honour in northern Norway – said he remembered Mr Stoltenberg as a young boy sitting in the kitchen.

Unsure whether that was true Mr Stoltenberg laughed as he added: “He’s a good politician so he knew that was the right thing to say.”

But the darkest day of his life came in his second term as prime minister when neo-Nazi Anders Breivik planted a bomb outside his Oslo office. The blast killed eight before Breivik went on to slaughter 69 young people on an island.

He said: “It was the most violent day we experienced since the Second World War.

But it also mobilised the best thing in Norwegian society, love, solidarity and the ability to support and comfort each other. It was a brutal day but a day when we saw the importance of standing together.”

He told Lauren Laverne that the West must also stand together to confront the rise of China as he urged President Donald Trump to remember peace and stability in Europe was also good for the security of the US.

He said: “My message to President Trump, as my message to all of the Nato allies, is that North America and Europe has to stand together, especially when we see the rise of China which is actually a shift in the global balance of power.” He pointed out that few people had predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of Isis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

He added: “The important thing is not to list precisely what we think will be the next crisis but more to be prepared for the unforeseen, be ready to act and be adaptable when things change.

“Nato is the most successful alliance in history exactly because we are able to change when the world is changing.” 

He said he visits the cemeteries and battlefields around his Brussels home and “seeing all the suffering, all the killing that took place there is a stark reminder of how brutal war is”.

But “peace was not something we can take for granted” and was “something we need to protect and defend everyday”.

One record he chose was No Harm by Smerz – a Norwegian band featuring his daughter Catharina while others were So Long Marianne by Leonard Cohen and Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen.

His luxury item was a textbook on statistics.

● Desert Island Discs, Radio 4, 11am today

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