King Charles leads silence for war dead after Catherine’s return to public life
King Charles has led Britain in two minutes of silence at a Remembrance Day service attended by Princess of Wales, who like the King has been treated for cancer.
The King was joined by the Princess of Wales and other members of the royal family as he led the nation during the Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph in London.
King Charles III, who was also diagnosed with cancer this year, was among the dignitaries laying wreaths at the Cenotaph memorial in central London after the nation fell silent at 11am local time (10pm aedt).
In a year when senior members of the royal family have been treated for serious illness, including the King, who has been having treatment for cancer, the second appearance from Catherine, the Princess of Wales, in as many days will be seen as a step forward.
The Queen, however, was forced to stay at home as she is still recovering from a chest infection.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said that the Queen was greatly disappointed at being unable to attend. He said that Camilla, 77, expected to return to her duties later this week and was marking the day privately at Ray Mill, her home in Wiltshire.
For Kate, 42, her appearances at Sunday’s service and at the British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night come after the end of her course of chemotherapy.
Kensington Palace aides had pointed months ago to this weekend as a key moment in the royal calendar and one that the princess had always hoped to take part in.
She fulfilled that ambition by appearing on the balcony at the Foreign and Commonwealth building on Whitehall to watch as the King, the Prince of Wales and other senior members of the royal family laid poppy wreaths.
The princess was wearing earrings that belonged to the late Queen and a brooch of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards,of which she is colonel-in-chief.
Princess Catherine watched the ceremony from a government building balcony as she stepped up her return to royal duties since ending chemotherapy in September.
Last year she stood alongside Camilla. This year, in the absence of the Queen, Kate was joined by the Duchess of Edinburgh, who at one point was seen putting a supportive hand on the princess’s back.
They watched as the King laid a wreath tied in ribbon the colour of his racing silks – scarlet, purple and gold. The message read: “In grateful remembrance of your service and sacrifice. Charles R.”
A wreath was laid for the Queen by her equerry, Major Ollie Plunket.
The Prince of Wales, Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Royal all laid wreaths, while the Duke of Kent watched from the balcony as an equerry placed one for him.
After the two minutes’ silence at 11am, the Bishop of London, the Right Rev Sarah Mullally, led the congregation in a short service which included the Lord’s Prayer and the hymn O God, Our Help in Ages Past.
The events, two of the most important dates in the royal calendar, marked the first time the princess had carried out two consecutive days of public official engagements this year.
Buckingham Palace announced in February that King Charles, 75, had been diagnosed with an undisclosed cancer and would withdraw from public life to undergo treatment.
The following month Princess Catherine, 42, revealed that she also had been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy.
Both have since made limited returns to public duties, with King Charles recently pausing his treatment while on tour in Australia and Samoa.
Prince William said this week that the past year had been “brutal” and probably the “hardest” of his life because of the twin diagnoses.
“Honestly, it’s been dreadful,” he told reporters on Thursday at the end of a four-day visit to South Africa for his Earthshot prize initiative.
“So, trying to get through everything else and keep everything on track has been really difficult.”
There was a record-breaking number of former prime ministers in attendance: Sir John Major, Sir Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Baroness May of Maidenhead, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The eight now take up almost an entire row of their own.
There were some new faces, too. It was Sir Keir Starmer’s first Remembrance Day as prime minister and the first national event for Kemi Badenoch as leader of the opposition.
Stephen Flynn, the Westminster leader of the SNP, laid a wreath but was later seen with lips clamped shut while everyone else sang the national anthem.
Under a formula set down in 1984 with the agreement of Queen Elizabeth II, only parties with six or more seats are invited to lay a wreath. This ruled out Reform UK and the Greens, who have five and four MPs respectively.
After the service came the march past. The Prince of Wales, in Royal Air Force uniform in the rank of wing commander, took the royal salute at Horse Guards Parade as 10,000 veterans from 326 regimental associations marched past. For the second year running the Royal British Legion had invited individual veterans not linked to any organisations to take part. This year they had more than 200 veterans, some from the Afghanistan conflict.
The oldest veteran taking part was Christian Lamb, who is 104. She is a former Wren who served in the Second World War and helped to chart the coast of France before the D-Day landings 80 years ago. Attending for the first time, she described the experience as “extraordinarily moving”.
Ms Lamb paid tribute to “the young creatures, some only 17 or 18” who made the ultimate sacrifice for wartime Britain while “we are here all these years later”.
The youngest on parade was Brandon Newby, aged nine, who is being helped by the military charity Scotty’s Little Soldiers since the death of his father, Guardsman father Sam Newby, two years ago.
There were also veterans from different conflicts including pilots, soldiers, divers and
Philippa Rawlinson, the director of remembrance at the Royal British Legion, said: “This year the Royal British Legion march past the Cenotaph is particularly poignant because we’re marking 80 years since the battles of 1944 and we’re really privileged to have some of the veterans who took part in those battles here with us today.
“We’re also marking 10 years since the end of the Afghanistan conflict.”
At the Albert Hall on Saturday night the royal family watched as Ben O’Donnell, 16, joined those paying tribute to the 457 British service personnel who lost their lives in Afghanistan. Ben was nine weeks old when his father, Warrant Officer Class 2 Gary O’Donnell, died in Helmand province in 2008 while trying to disarm an improvised explosive device.
Ben laid the final rose on the stage.
Services took place across the United Kingdom, including in Belfast where Northern Ireland leader Michelle O’Neill became the first senior figure from the pro-Irish unity party Sinn Fein to attend a Remembrance Sunday service in the province.
Ms O’Neill said her attendance backed her commitment to “moving beyond old limits and building bridges”.
Sinn Fein was the political wing of the paramilitary IRA during the Troubles – the three-decade sectarian conflict over British rule in Northern Ireland.
With AFP
More Coverage
Zelensky calls for a European army, questions US as an ally
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has told the Munich security conference that only a European army – self sufficient and united – can hold back Russia.
Zelensky, Scholz reject any US unilateralism in Ukraine peace efforts
Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday insisted no decisions should be taken on ending Russia’s war without Kyiv and Europe as Germany’s chancellor also rejected JD Vance’s ‘intervention’.