King Charles is celebrating his 76th birthday, following a challenging year in which he was diagnosed with cancer.
Gun salutes will be fired in Green Park by The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery and at the Tower of London by the Honourable Artillery Company as part of the military’s traditional celebrations on the sovereign’s birthday, and bells will be rung at Westminster Abbey where the King was crowned in 2023.
Charles, like his late mother Elizabeth II, has two birthdays, his actual one on 14 November, and his official one, which falls on the second Saturday in June.
Following the death of Elizabeth on 8 September 2022, Charles, formerly the Prince of Wales, ascended the throne and became the King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms.
The eldest child of the late Queen was the longest-serving heir apparent and the oldest person to accede to the throne. He has three younger siblings, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
During his time as the Prince of Wales, Charles became known for his environmentalist stances and his work raising awareness about climate change and sustainability. He is also known for being an outspoken supporter of small businesses and family-owned farms in the UK.
As we celebrate his milestone birthday, many British people are reflecting on Charles’ life. Here is a timeline:
Early life
Prince Charles Philip Arthur George was welcomed into the world on 14 November 1948 at Buckingham Palace, the first child of the future Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
When Charles was just four, his grandfather King George VI died and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, took the throne. The following year, Charles became the first heir apparent to attend school instead of receiving education through a private tutor, when he attended Hill House School in west London.
Later in life, Charles attended Philip’s former schools, Cheam Preparatory School in Hampshire and Gordonstoun in the Scottish Highlands. His time at the latter is said to have been marred by experiences of bullying, which he reportedly described as “absolute hell”.
However, the royal praised the school as an adult, telling told The Observer Magazine in 1974 that talk of his unhappiness while studying was “exaggerated”. In 1975, he said in a speech to the House of Lords: “I am always astonished by the amount of rot talked about Gordonstoun and the careless use of ancient clichés used to describe it. It was only tough in the sense that it demanded more of you as an individual than most other schools did – mentally and physically. I am lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself and my own abilities and disabilities,” he continued.
Charles went on to study archaeology and anthropology at Trinity College in Cambridge University, later changing to history for the second part of his degree. He also spent a term at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth to learn how to speak Welsh.
The Prince of Wales
In 1969, he was invested as Prince of Wales in a ceremony at Caernarfon Castle. Charles gave the first two paragraphs of his speech in Welsh before switching to English. He said: “It is with a certain sense of pride and emotion that I have received these symbols of office, here in this magnificent fortress, where no one could fail to be stirred by its atmosphere of time-worn grandeur, not where I myself could be unaware of the long history of Wales in its determination to remain individual and to guard its own particular heritage.”
But Charles’ speech came at a time when anti-English sentiment in Wales was particularly high and caused concern among government officials. In 2000, cabinet papers revealed that members of former prime minister Harold Wilson’s government were worried that Charles had made speeches that “boosted Welsh nationalism”, with Welsh secretary George Thomas suggesting that the young prince had been influenced by Welsh nationalists.
This perhaps marked the beginnings of Charles’ reputation for being a “political” royal – a departure from the sovereign’s traditional role in staying out of politics. Last year, the Financial Times wrote that “so much more is known about many of King Charles’ views, because he, while Prince of Wales, has been active in promoting his causes with ministers and allowing his opinions to become known”.
Personal life
Charles’ personal life has seen many twists and turns over the years. From his failed marriage to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, to his current troubles with his youngest son Prince Harry, the King’s private life has been laid bare far more times than he would likely have approved of. His marriage to Diana was blemished by the couple’s incompatibility and bitter feuds, as he maintained his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles and Diana became increasingly paranoid and unhappy while living in Buckingham Palace.
More than a decade after they wed in 1981, former prime minister John Major announced Charles and Diana’s legal separation in Parliament in 1992. They were formally divorced on 28 August 1996, after the Queen formally advised them the previous December to end the marriage. When Diana tragically died in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997, Charles flew to the French capital with her sisters to retrieve her body and accompany it back to Britain.
People close to Charles and Camilla have said that Charles was “much happier” with Camilla than Diana. The pair continued their relationship and, in April 2005, married in a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall. Camilla is the Queen Consort and will be crowned alongside Charles at the coronation ceremony this spring. Photographer Arthur Edwards, who has photographed the royal family for The Sun for more than 40 years, said that Charles was “contented” after marrying Camilla. Edwards added that Camilla “brought a whole new meaning for Prince Charles” as well as a “spring to Charles’ step”.
But while Charles’ love life has settled, his family relations remain tense when it comes to his youngest son, the Duke of Sussex. In the years since he stepped down as a senior member of the royal family, Harry has revealed many details about life behind the closed doors of Buckingham Palace and within the Institution. In his recent memoir, Spare, the duke laid bare a number of grievances, including accusations of the royal family “leaking” and “planting” unsavoury stories about his wife, Meghan Markle, to distract the media and public from negative stories about other members of the family.
Harry has two main criticisms of his father. In an ITV interview ahead of the release of Spare, he said: “[Charles had] always given an air of not being quite ready for parenthood: the responsibilities, the patience, the time. Even he, though a proud man, would have admitted as much. But single parenthood? Pa was never made for that. To be fair, he tried.” Harry’s second criticism was that “too often your interests are sacrificed to his interests, certainly when it comes to the press”.
Charles’ reputation as an environmentally and politically aware royal was cemented during his time as the Prince of Wales. But in 2018, he told the BBC that when he became King, he would cease to be a self-described “inveterate interferer and meddler”. “I’m not that stupid,” he said at the time. “I do realise that it is a separate exercise being sovereign. So, of course I understand entirely how that should operate.”
Cancer Diagnosis
The King faced a rollercoaster second year as sovereign, with news of his cancer, undisclosed in its form, on 5 February 2024, after it was discovered while he was treated in hospital for an enlarged prostate in January.
The year 2024 looked set to offer a chance for the King and the royal family to settle in amid the aftermath of the late Queen’s death, the King’s accession in 2022 and the hectic demands of the coronation in 2023.
But the health blows faced by Charles and the Princess of Wales torpedoed any plans for a run-of-the-mill year.
He cancelled all face-to-face public duties following the diagnosis but continued working behind the scenes. The King resumed his weekly audiences later that month with the then-prime minister, and told Rishi Sunak the public’s “wonderful” get well messages had “reduced me to tears most of the time”.
His nephew Peter Phillips revealed at the time the King was “frustrated that he can’t get on and do everything that he wants to be able to do”.
Charles, who made an appearance at church on Easter Sunday, returned to public-facing duties in April by visiting a cancer centre in London, with his medical team “very encouraged” by the progress he had made.
The first completed portrait of the King since his coronation – by Jonathan Yeo – was unveiled, depicting the monarch bathed in red with, at Charles’s suggestion, a butterfly at his shoulder, symbolising his metamorphosis from prince to King.
The King and Queen attended moving D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations in Portsmouth and Normandy, where they were overcome with emotion as they listened to the sacrifices made by those who fought.
High profile appearances included Trooping the Colour, with Charles in a carriage rather than on horseback because of his illness, and a welcome brief return for Kate, who said in an update that she has “good days and bad days”, but was “not out of the woods yet”.
Duty called when the State Opening of Parliament, straight after a packed whirlwind two-day official tour to the Channel Islands, fell on Camilla’s 77th birthday.
Charles undertook a recent hectic tour to Australia and Samoa with the Queen, despite still undergoing outpatient cancer treatment.
