The King is about to begin his annual summer break, swapping sweltering London for the slightly cooler conditions of Balmoral in Scotland. However, he's reportedly also stepped up amid this time of drought to help a struggling British tradition and donated an entire field's worth of wheat to artisan hat maker Emily Hurst.
The milliner specialises in crafting beautiful, high-end straw hats and relies on Maris Widgeon, a heritage wheat variety. Poor harvests and changeable weather has led to a national shortage and she told BBC Radio 4 that could "potentially create hundreds of hats" from King Charles's generous donation.
"We've got a whole field's worth here," she claimed, admitting that the royal offer was "quite hard to imagine if I'm honest, it's still quite surreal, it's still sinking in."
Emily explained the problems she was having in sourcing the much-needed straw and King Charles's wheat allegedly came from his Sandringham Estate in Norfolk. He's a big champion of heritage crafts and the milliner already has a special royal connection.
In June last year she became the first ever winner of a £10,000 bursary, awarded by Ascot Racecourse in partnership with the Chanel & The King's Foundation Métiers d'Art Millinery Fellowship. The programme helps the next generation of hat makers and TKF's director of education, Daniel McAuliffe, said it was the "perfect fit" for King Charles.
"[W]e're definitely a country of hat wearers, we're probably the biggest hat wearers in the world, especially during Ascot week," he told The Telegraph. "The Royal family are instrumental in keeping hats relevant, we'll see that in the coming weeks when there will be lots of hats in the newspapers."
At Royal Ascot the royal men all wear top hats, though women regularly wear sculptural headpieces to a huge array of formal occasions. We've seen Zara Tindall wearing straw hats in public several times and earlier this year the Princess of Wales wore a houndstooth straw boater for the installation of Dame Sarah Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury.
They'll probably be very supportive of His Majesty's supposed straw donation and amid the heatwave it would certainly be a lifeline for Emily and her straw hat creations. Over half of England and the whole of Wales are in drought right now, though Scotland is currently slightly cooler and has had some rain.
The King and Queen are expected to head north very soon if they haven't already, as Balmoral Castle officially closed to visitors on 9th August. The couple have their own home, Birkhall, on the estate, though it's traditional for the monarch to host their family at the castle in the summer.
Balmoral was one of the late Queen Elizabeth's favourite residences and it's also where she passed away in 2022. In a foreword for a 2026 Balmoral guidebook, Charles described it as the "cherished Scottish home of [his] family".
"With its buildings of startling individuality, which never fail to fascinate, and its precious, almost sacred, surrounding landscape, it is a place where there is constant change, yet everything remains unaltered, with a sense of timelessness which refreshes the soul," he declared.
