King Charles to visit cancer treatment centre to mark return to public duties

King Charles will visit a cancer treatment centre next week, in a fitting return to public duties.

Buckingham Palace has announced that both the King and Queen will meet medical specialists and patients during a visit on Tuesday to raise awareness of the importance of early diagnosis.

The visit will mark the first engagement the King and Queen have carried out as a couple since November 14, Charles’s 75th birthday, when they launched the Coronation Food Project.

For the monarch, it will signal a remarkable turning point and the start of what looks to be a busy rest of the year.

When it was announced at the start of February that the King had been diagnosed with cancer, the monarch would not have been expected to assume he would be greeting the masses at a Buckingham Palace summer garden party, never mind boarding a plane for the other side of the world.

But just three months after the diagnosis, the palace has revealed that he is responding so well to treatment that he is able to undertake a programme of summer engagements.

From the Chelsea Flower Show to Royal Ascot, the summer social season incorporates the big set pieces of the royal calendar.

And to his immense delight, the King will find himself at its heart. The relief within his court is almost palpable, although aides insist that engagements will be “adapted where necessary” to minimise any risks to his health.

Despite the King’s own wholly positive outlook, caution has long been the watchword. Variables such as the capacity for downtime and the number of people he might meet will be factored into every appearance.

The annual Buckingham Palace garden parties have long kicked off the season, as thousands of guests gather in their hats and tailcoats to enjoy finger sandwiches and beautifully presented cakes on the expansive palace lawn.

This year’s garden parties will take place on May 8 and May 21.

The King expects to attend at least one of them, although whether he processes down a long “lane” greeting the great and the good, as per tradition, remains to be seen.

Three weeks later, the King is hoping to join the 80th anniversary commemorations of D-Day.

On June 6, events on both sides of the Channel will mark the anniversary of the Normandy landings, celebrating those who ran the gauntlet of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall and setting the wheels in motion for the liberation of Western Europe.

Then comes Trooping the Colour, the monarch’s official birthday parade, which will have an added celebratory air this year.

To the relief of all concerned, not least the King himself, His Majesty is expected to be the star guest during the colourful spectacle on June 15.

Since March, Buckingham Palace and the Ministry of Defence have been working in lockstep, exploring ways in which he could take part while avoiding any undue risk to his health.

Options included watching the pomp and the pageantry from a podium, rather than on horseback, and being driven from Buckingham Palace in a carriage.

As the King joins other senior members of the Royal family on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the traditional RAF flypast, the crowd’s roar will surely be louder than ever.

Two days later, on June 17, it is Garter Day, when the King hopes to join Royal Knights and Ladies of the Order of the Garter at St George’s Chapel in Windsor for a procession and ceremony.

There will be little time for rest, as the following day marks the start of Royal Ascot, the racing fixture that became synonymous with the late Elizabeth II, who was besotted with horse racing and barely missed a meeting.

Fears that the event’s valuable royal connection would falter after her death have proved unfounded. Determined to take up the mantle, the King attended every day of last year’s meeting to the delight of industry insiders, breeders, managers and racegoers alike.

Similarly, this year aides are planning for a “significant” level of attendance.

At the end of June, the King and Queen will host the Emperor and Empress of Japan for a state visit.

The last such visit, from South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee, was in November, including a ceremonial welcome followed by a state banquet.

Holyrood Week, which traditionally falls at the end of June into the beginning of July, is also likely to be marked by the King as he celebrates all things Scottish.

At the beginning of August, the monarch will retire to his beloved Scottish Highlands for his annual summer break, where he will continue royal tradition by gathering the wider family together for their usual countryside walks, grouse shooting, fishing and picnics.

Charles is expected to first decamp to the Castle of Mey, the home that once belonged to his late grandmother, Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

He usually attends the Mey Highland Games in Caithness, which this year falls on August 3, before travelling down to Birkhall, his private home on the Balmoral estate. There, he is expected privately to mark the second anniversary of his accession on September 8.

The King usually opts to remain in Scotland until the beginning of October, interspersing his break with occasional engagements.

If his treatment continues to go to plan, he will no doubt want to rest before the first major overseas tour of his reign.

Buckingham Palace is ploughing on with plans for an autumn state visit to Australia and the King remains “hopeful” that he will be able to make the trip, which is to be organised around the annual Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (Chogm) in Samoa, beginning on October 21.

Palace aides are looking at the proposed schedule and have begun making tentative plans. However, the schedule is likely to be scaled back, with the potential tour closer to two weeks rather than three in length. A trip to Fiji is said to have been ruled out.

Sources caution that it is still early days and that such trips are reliant on how the King reacts to ongoing treatment in the coming months.

“It is no great mystery that the King is keen to attend Chogm if he is able,” one said recently. “If he is able to go, of course he will go. Plans continue but there are no guarantees, we are still a long way off.”

The highly anticipated visit to Australia, alongside the Queen, would mark the King’s first trip to the country since his accession and the first by a ruling monarch since Elizabeth II in 2011.

Event organisers Down Under are already jostling for position, with invitations extended for the royals to attend Melbourne Cup on November 5, The Everest race day in Sydney on October 19 and Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo.

A visit is also expected to include attendance at the bicentenary celebrations of the New South Wales parliament’s upper house.

In December, as he drafts his Christmas message to the nation, the King will have plenty to reflect on. But if the upward trajectory continues, it will hopefully be a message of triumph after a testing year.