The Queen has shared a poignant insight into what it was like knowing her husband was battling cancer but keeping it private throughout an engagement close to her heart. King Charles made his diagnosis public on 5th February and a few days earlier, Her Majesty opened a new Maggie's cancer support centre at the Royal Free Hospital.
In a new video marking the 30th anniversary of Maggie's cancer charity, Queen Camilla recalled how tough it was to not say anything about the King's health during this visit. She explained, "Nobody could say anything at the time, that was quite difficult."
"I almost said something but, you know, I felt that it wasn't the time to say," she told Dame Laura Lee, the chief executive of Maggie's, before admitting, "I was just longing to let it out, but obviously I couldn't."
Dame Laura remarked upon the "courage that must have taken" for the Queen to undertake this particular engagement on 31st January, knowing what her husband was going through. Camilla admitted that she was "almost questioning" the families she met that day but "didn't want to pry too deeply".
"But normally when I went in, I was just talking to them, but I don't know, I felt it was much more deep," she said in the seven-minute film, which was recorded at her and King Charles's Clarence House home.
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The Queen continued, "I looked at everybody who was suffering and all the relations and I think it made me realise even more how important these places were."
King Charles later made his diagnosis public and his wife remarked upon how "nothing stopped him". His approach was to say, "This is my way. I'm going to cope with it". His Majesty continues to undergo treatment for an undisclosed type of cancer and in December he shared a candid health update as part of Channel 4's Stand Up To Cancer campaign.
He said that "thanks to early diagnosis, effective interventions and adherence to 'doctors' orders', [his] own schedule of cancer treatment [could] be reduced in the New Year." He called this milestone a "personal blessing and a testimony to the remarkable advances" in cancer care.
Since being diagnosed, the King has advocated for the importance of screenings and Maggie's says his public announcement prompted a 12% increase in men contacting them with a cancer diagnosis. The positive impact his openness has had means a lot to Charles, who went on to release another message in February 2024.
"It is equally heartening to hear how sharing my own diagnosis has helped promote public understanding and shine a light on the work of all those organisations which support cancer patients and their families across the UK and wider world," he declared.
King Charles became Patron of Cancer Research UK in April 2024 and Queen Camilla has been President of Maggie's since 2008. Just after the King's diagnosis was made public, Dame Laura told BBC Breakfast about how the Queen was at the opening of the new centre in January 2024.
"We know this information about King Charles after that visit, but during it she sat down, as she does in all of our centres, with a group of people affected by cancer, who talked about their own stories, about how they had navigated the challenges of cancer, and how important support was for them," she said.
