In a difficult week for King Charles and the royal family, there is one thing on which his majesty has been able to rely: the effusive support of some of the country’s most loyal newspaper columnists.
News that the king is being treated for cancer has led to an exuberance of royal purple prose, challenging any suggestion that Britain has become less deferential since the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
The Daily Telegraph’s front-page column on Tuesday, written by Simon Heffer, was a case in point, published under the headline “Knowing he has the support of his people will strengthen his spirits”. The king’s diagnosis “has come as a profound shock to his people”, Heffer wrote, and “can only deepen the bond of fellow feeling that they have developed with our sovereign … The tsunami of goodwill on which the king will be borne during his … battle will be enormous”.
The tsunami of excitable metaphors continued elsewhere in the same newspaper, where the royal editor, Hannah Furness, wrote: “In a matter of hours yesterday, the royal family’s world shifted on its axis, and Britain with it.”
In the Express, meanwhile, Christopher Wilson was taking comfort that the “king knows he has the love of his life by his side”. He added: “Together – together – they will see it through.”
For truly anguished emotion, though, few could outdo Liz Jones, writing in the Daily Mail. “Charles, we need you to be OK so that we’re OK,” read the headline to her Tuesday column. “We’re not ready for William yet.”
She had always regarded him indifferently, she wrote, “a bit like wallpaper”, until his first televised address after becoming king. “And that was the moment, right there, that I changed my mind about him and fell not in love, but in deep, deep fondness. He’s our top person, really.
“If cancer can strike him, what hope the rest of us? … He knows we need him to be OK so that we are OK.”
There was similar passion from her Daily Mail colleague Sarah Vine. “In these turbulent, anxiety-inducing times, this is a shock and blow for us all,” read the headline to her column.
Thank goodness, she wrote, for Prince William (“a loyal and loving son”), Princess Anne (“an absolute rock”) and Queen Camilla (“a woman who would walk over hot coals for him”). “Let them take up the slack for now. And get well soon, your majesty. Your country needs you.”
