The King is looking forward to getting back to a ‘pretty normal looking’ programme of overseas trips next year as he adapts to living with cancer.
Charles will fly abroad in the spring and autumn – the traditional periods for official foreign royal visits – provided doctors give him the green light.
The monarch recently completed the biggest overseas trip since he began treatment for cancer in February to Australia and Samoa.
Charles ‘genuinely loved’ the tour, which a senior Buckingham Palace official said lifted ‘his spirits, his mood and his recovery’, adding: ‘In that sense, the tour, despite its demands, has been the perfect tonic.’
An update about the state of the King’s health or his treatment has not been given but the news that Charles will take on more overseas trips suggests his cancer is being managed successfully.
Australia was a significant visit for Charles as it was his first to the country as King and in Samoa he opened a major Commonwealth summit.
Commenting on the King’s decision to go ahead with it, the Palace official said: ‘I think it’s great testament to the King’s devotion to service and duty that he was prepared to come this far and he was incredibly happy and very, very determined to do so.’
The King has been receiving treatment as an out-patient for an undisclosed form of cancer since early February, and initially postponed all public-facing duties, continuing to work behind the scenes, and returned to events with the public in late April.
Maintaining a work schedule after his diagnosis has been an important part of Charles’s holistic approach to his cancer, and during the recent trip with his wife he maintained a busy schedule for the benefit of ‘mind and soul’ while the doctor on the trip looked after the body.
The official said about the large number of events the King attended during the recent tour: ‘It is also a great measure of the way that the King is dealing with the diagnosis.
‘And he’s a great believer in mind, body and soul, and this combination works very well on a visit like this, because he feels that sense of duty so strongly that to keep his mind and his soul engaged and then the doctor is here to make sure that his body is properly looked after, you’ve got what makes for very successful visit in in these circumstances.’
During Charles’s welcome by parliamentarians in Canberra he was confronted by Senator Lidia Thorpe who accused him of grievances against First Nations people including ‘genocide’.
‘He was completely unruffled,’ the official said. ‘He’s been around a long time. As always, kept calm, carried on.’
His Majesty believes ‘free speech is the cornerstone of democracy, and so everyone is entitled to their views’, they added.
Potential problems during tours are ‘not ducked’, the official went on, before pointing out that although it’s ‘very easy to run away from some of these issues’: ‘The King isn’t one for doing that.’
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