Queen says King is ‘getting on and doing his best’ after hospital stay
Camilla reveals update on husband as she opens new cancer centre at London’s Royal Free Hospital
THE King is “getting on” and “doing his best” following his three-night stay in hospital, the Queen said yesterday.
The Queen, 76, was asked how her husband was faring as she officially opened a new Maggie’s cancer support centre at the Royal Free Hospital in north-west London. On arrival, she was introduced to donors including Sir Gerald Ronson, who asked after the King’s health following his treatment for an enlarged prostate.
“He’s getting on, doing his best,” she replied.
When Dori Dana-haeri, who led the fundraising effort for the new centre, said she was “so pleased” King Charles, 75, was well, the Queen nodded as she said: “Thank goodness.”
Meanwhile, supporter Sir Michael Pakenham said: “All best wishes to His Majesty for the very best recovery.”
The Queen replied: “Thank you very much, that’s very kind. I’ll pass it on.”
The King was discharged from The London Clinic on Monday, waving as he left the private hospital with his wife at his side.
The Queen has been president of Maggie’s since 2008. The engagement yesterday marked her 17th visit to a Maggie’s centre and her first as Queen.
“I try and get around them but every time, another one pops up so I never quite catch up,” she joked.
Maggie’s Royal Free has been operating from an interim base inside the main hospital building since 2016. Its new centre is expected to receive more than 10,000 visits in its first year alone.
Among those on hand to greet the Queen was John Jencks, 45, the son of the founder, Maggie Keswick Jencks, who was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 47 and wanted to use her experience to create a new type of cancer care.
She died in July 1995 and the first Maggie’s centre opened in Edinburgh the following year.
The Queen said that the centres were “so special” as she thanked the staff for “everything they do”.
Asking one member of the clinical team if they had been there since the beginning, she added: “You get all the best people here.”
Upstairs, the Queen met four cancer patients being supported by the centre and sat down with them for a chat.
Billie Jean Daniels, 51, from Highgate, north London, was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2022. She told the Queen she had discovered Maggie’s after undergoing chemotherapy.
She described the centre as her “little haven” and a “home from home”.
The Queen said: “It’s such an incredible place. You can literally come and chill, can’t you?”
Marilyn Bello, 51, also from north London, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer in 2020.
She told the Queen she had been coming to Maggie’s during chemotherapy and had met many new friends and “people who understand you”.
She thanked her for her work but the Queen replied: “It’s not me you should be thanking.” She added: “It’s nice that you can just drop in if you want to, you don’t have to make an appointment.”
The Queen also warmly greeted Viscountess Marcia Blakenham, a friend of Keswick Jencks who has been involved with the charity ever since its inception.
The Viscountess said afterwards: “She’s been so wonderful for Maggie’s, she’s very, very good with people and has great empathy.
“She really believes in what Maggie’s does and understands that it’s about helping people going through very frightening things, people who are in a very, very unpleasant situation.”
Dame Laura Lee, the chief executive of Maggie’s, briefly addressed donors, members of staff and patients who had gathered for the official opening.
She told the Queen her “empathy for those living with cancer, and the people who love them, was evident”. Noting that the Queen had once said every city needed a Maggie’s, she told her: “We’re trying very hard to get there.”
Dame Laura said the architect Daniel Libeskind and his team had devised an “extraordinary and beautiful design.”
Describing how it had been the last building that Keswick Jencks’s husband, Charles Jencks, worked on before he died, Dame Laura added: “I know how much he would have loved seeing its completion and how proud he would have been of this, our 24th centre.”
Mr Libeskind said he wanted to create a building that had “a kind of poetry and musicality to it, based on certain curvatures like the growing of a seed to flowering”. It is a building organised around light, he added, with a domestic scale like a home, “infusing people who come here with a sense of optimism, with a sense of hope and a sense of life”.