The announcement by Buckingham Palace that the King had suffered an adverse reaction to his cancer treatment in March had many worrying that he was doing too much. He certainly was and is still, but Charles III has always been driven by duty and a permanent anxiety not to let people down.
Some of the everyday duties of kingship can be repetitive and tedious but as head of state His Majesty feels these duties are as important as the more glamorous receptions and overseas travels he also undertakes. He has always said he cares about things ‘too much’ but that is part of his character and Queen Camilla has helped to make his life less stressful by administering the best medicine of all – laughter. Because they are both so busy it is easy to forget the Queen will celebrate her 78th birthday in July and the King his 77th in November.
The death of one of Princes William and Harry’s childhood protection officers, Graham Craker, in April at the age of 77 was particularly sad as it was a reminder of how the royal brothers were once so close. He commanded their particular affection during a sensitive time in their lives and was a dab hand at keeping William and Harry amused with his juvenile jokes. Craker was in Scotland with the royal family in August 1997 when they heard the news of Diana’s death and later walked behind the gun carriage carrying the princess’s coffin as it made its way from St James’s Palace to Westminster Abbey for her funeral.
Royal family members used to be close to their protection officers as they were the people who spent the most time with them. Nowadays, officers from the Royalty Protection Group are frequently moved around and consequently relationships built up over years no longer develop.
The Duke of Sussex has been in the news again, this time because he was forced to resign from Sentebale, the charity he launched with Prince Seeiso in 2006 to help children and young people affected by HIV and AIDS in Lesotho in southern Africa.
Harry said he was ‘in shock’ and ‘truly heartbroken’ when he and Seeiso resigned after the entire board of trustees felt obliged to throw in the towel. For years Harry has concentrated on this pet project and many of the former trustees are his friends. A fall-out between the trustees and the charity’s chair, Sophie Chandauka, who was appointed in 2023, led to the princes feeling they had no alternative but to resign.
Dr Chandauka gave an interview to Sky News in which she voiced her opinion about the running of the charity, blaming Harry’s ‘toxic’ reputation after leaving the royal family as one of the reasons they were not getting sponsors. There is much sympathy for Harry’s distress as Sentebale and the Invictus Games are his most successful achievements. As the charity’s joint founder he must now hope that a Charity Commission investigation will help work things out.
There is media conjecture that Harry might have discussed things with his father when he came to the UK for a court case in April, shortly before the King left for Rome, but there is no official confirmation that a conversation of any kind took place.
