King Charles will embrace regular overseas trips next year as he adapts to living with cancer, a spokesperson for His Majesty said on Saturday.
Charles will travel abroad during the spring and autumn, the traditional periods for official foreign royal visits, provided doctors sanction the trips. The news comes after the King and Queen returned from their 10-day tour of Australia and Samoa.
© PoolA spokesperson for Buckingham Palace confirmed: "We’re now working on a pretty normal-looking full overseas tour programme for next year, which is a high point for us, knowing that we can think in those terms."
There was no update on the King’s health or the progress of his treatment. The spokesperson added that the King "genuinely loved" the tour and "genuinely thrived" on the Australian and Samoan programme, which ended on Saturday, as it lifted “his spirits, his mood, and his recovery."
© Samir HusseinThey added: "In that sense, the tour, despite its demands, has been the perfect tonic." He went on to say the monarch draws great strength from the Queen’s presence, particularly as she "keeps it real."
Australia was a significant visit for Charles as it marked his first trip to the country as King, and in Samoa, he opened a major Commonwealth summit.
Commenting on Charles’s decision to undertake the tour, the official said: "I think it’s a great testament to the King’s devotion to service and duty that he was prepared to come this far. He was incredibly happy and very, very determined to do so."
The King has been receiving treatment as an outpatient for an undisclosed form of cancer since February. Initially, he postponed all public-facing duties, continuing to work behind the scenes, and resumed events with the public in late April.
Regarding the large number of events the King attended during the recent tour, the palace official commented: "It is also a great measure of how the King is dealing with the diagnosis. He’s a great believer in mind, body, and soul, and this combination works very well on a visit like this. He feels that sense of duty so strongly that keeping his mind and soul engaged, with the doctor ensuring his body is properly looked after, creates a very successful visit under these circumstances."
During his recent overseas visit, the King had a VIP team on board to ensure he stayed well. According to royal reporter Gordon Rayner, who has been on 20 royal tours, the monarch is always accompanied by a Royal Navy doctor on his travels, who will have researched the nearest hospitals in advance.
The King also had packs of blood travelling in convoy. "You’ve got to make sure that you’re covering every eventuality, and the aircraft would carry blood in case a transfusion was needed," former press secretary to the Queen, Dickie Arbiter, told HELLO! when asked why they carried blood with them.
"There’s never any guarantee you are going to get the right type of blood at your destination," he added.
