Work has always been an anchor for King Charles. It goes deeper than most people realise
Since his cancer diagnosis, Charles has clearly made a decision that he will pack in as much as he can into that ‘remaining time’ – however long or short it is.
Those who work for King Charles joke that they can only relax for an hour on Sunday at 11am when he goes to church.
For the rest of the week, Charles’s “puritanical work ethic” means that he never stops, constantly squeezing more public duties into his diary if he spots even a small gap. His cancer treatment has not changed his zealous approach to the job.
Watching the King in action on Tuesday night, supporting Queen Camilla at a star-studded reception for her Reading Room charity, you could almost forget he is a septuagenarian who has been enduring cancer treatment for over a year.
Yes, Charles’s eyes were tired and he held on to the banister for support as Camilla delivered a speech to her guests from the Clarence House staircase, but he then worked the room - for more than an hour – talking to the actress Dame Joanna Lumley, his biographer Jonathan Dimbleby and many others.
A friend of the King said: “He’s got a puritanical work ethic. It goes beyond any concept of a ‘working week’. He doesn’t understand the concept of downtime. In a world where he has had difficult times in terms of public perception and popularity, work has always been his protection and safe space. Even at his worst times, it has been an anchor for him. It goes deeper than people realise.
“If you work for him, the only time in the week you can relax is 11am on a Sunday when he will be at church. Other than that, you need to be ready from 8am until midnight, when he might call you at any time.”
The “minor bump”, as royal sources described last week’s “short period of observation” in the London Clinic after he suffered side effects from his scheduled treatment on Thursday, will have frustrated him. The afternoon’s engagements and a day trip to Birmingham on Friday had to be cancelled.
But the King remains reluctant to entertain any idea of easing his diary. As one of his closest confidants told me: “He just really doesn’t feel as if he’s ‘being King’ if he’s not out there actually doing it all. That’s what drives him.”
Health permitting, unless there is a serious bump over the next week, it is what will drive him to fulfil the commitment of next month’s state visit to Italy, which the palace still hopes will go ahead as planned. Charles, 76, and Camilla, 77, are due to arrive in Rome next Monday for the four-day trip. While they will no longer see the Pope, who is recuperating after his five-week hospital stint for pneumonia, it is a packed itinerary with up to seven engagements a day.
Do those close to him think he works too hard given his condition? Yes. Can anyone rein him in? No. As Camilla said last year when asked about her husband’s health, his recovery might be boosted “if he behaved himself”, referring to his workload. She has also admitted defeat in “trying to hold him back”.
Before postponing last week’s engagements, the King had already packed in more to his week than many pensioners would contemplate. Before joining Camilla on Tuesday evening, he conducted an investiture at Windsor Castle and later in the day joined Princess Anne at St James’s Palace for the Butler Trust Awards, which recognise people who work in prisons, the probation service and youth justice. On Wednesday morning, he toured an exhibition about soil at Somerset House. That evening, he and Camilla hosted a reception for the media at Buckingham Palace. The previous week, he and Camilla visited Northern Ireland.
After returning to Clarence House on Thursday evening after his trip to the London Clinic, he was back at his desk in his study, working on state papers and making calls into the night. As much as those close to him would like to see him take a break from his red boxes this weekend at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home, they know it is an unthinkable scenario. Camilla, perhaps conscious that no amount of nagging will make any difference, will spend this weekend at Raymill, her home in Wiltshire, without him.
The King’s medical team are expected to see how he feels over the weekend with a view to this week’s engagements. “There may be a bit of pruning around the edges to lighten the load and we may find ourselves taking a more precautionary approach as he goes forwards,” said an aide.
Without work, the King is not himself. As a friend noted after he resumed public duties last April at the end of a two-month hiatus after his cancer diagnosis: “He’s a bloody caged lion, driving everyone round the twist if he’s stuck at home.” Another friend who received letters from Charles that spoke of his “somewhat battered health” said: “I hear determination that he doesn’t want to let it slow him down, a pragmatic acceptance of the changes that have had to be made to his program, and an absolute desire to get back to full speed.”
There is no doubt he has returned to warp speed. Like Camilla, the Prince of Wales also frets about his “workaholic” father’s pace. As a source close to William said when his father resumed public duties: “He wants to make sure his father is balancing his recovery. He knows his father loves work, but he does worry about him.” After Charles and Camilla’s tour of Australia and Samoa last October, where, at times, the King understandably appeared exhausted, aides said he had actually found the trip a “perfect tonic” as he took a “mind, body and soul” approach to the disease.
The day after Queen Elizabeth’s death in September 2022, in his televised address to the nation and the Commonwealth, the new King said: “As the Queen herself did with such unswerving devotion, I too now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation.”
Since his diagnosis, Charles has clearly made a decision that he will pack in as much as he can into that “remaining time” however long or short it is, to secure his Carolean legacy. “The King will never retire,” says a friend. “He has a deep spiritual sense of what it means to be sovereign. He will work until he no longer exists, like his mother did.”
As well as ploughing through his red boxes this weekend, Charles will be tending his garden at Highgrove. He may also visit “the sanctuary”, an outbuilding that friends describe as his “quiet place of contemplation”. Charles is said to be the only person who holds a key and it is the one place he can be entirely alone. It is, perhaps, the perfect spot to reflect on his mantra of how he is approaching living with cancer, which he recently revealed to a group of fellow sufferers in Northern Ireland: “What’s that Winston Churchill saying? Keep buggering on. You just have to push on, don’t you?”
The Sunday Times
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