Hunt: Telling children about cancer is ‘most difficult thing’

HEARING the Princess of Wales discuss telling her children about her cancer diagnosis “cut me to the quick”, Jeremy Hunt has said, as it reminded him of his own brother’s experience of the disease.

The Chancellor said that he was “touched” by the Princess’s announcement on Friday, particularly her experience explaining her diagnosis to her three young children.

The Princess disclosed in a video filmed at the gardens at Windsor that following successful abdominal surgery, post-operative tests found that “cancer had been present”.

She is now undergoing chemotherapy treatment having recovered from the major operation in January.

Mr Hunt said the Princess speaking about telling her children particularly resonated with him, as his family found that it was the “most difficult thing” about his younger brother being diagnosed with cancer in 2020.

Charlie Hunt died last year, aged 53, after being diagnosed with sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that develop in the bones and soft tissues. He had three children.

When asked about his reaction to the Princess of Wales’s announcement, the Chancellor said: “It was incredibly moving, and I think I was touched like everyone else was.

“I think the thing that really caught me to the quick was when she explained the hardest thing of all for people who’ve had cancer in their family, which is how you tell your kids, and that’s obviously been a huge thing for her and for the Prince of Wales.”

He told Sky News’s Sir Trevor Phillips: “I know in my own family when my brother had cancer, that was the most difficult thing.

“I think when she said that, she just connected with everyone and we all felt yes, it’s the Royal family, but in some ways, they’re like every other family and they’re going through the same horrible things that sadly, we all have to go through from time to time.”

The Chancellor ran alongside his brother at the London Marathon in 2022 to raise money for cancer charities, raising more than £22,000.

Mr Hunt ran the London Marathon again in 2023 to raise money for the Royal Surrey Hospital’s cancer centre and will be running it for a third time next month.

In June 2022, Mr Hunt was himself also diagnosed with skin cancer after discovering a mole on his head, which he had to have removed.

He told the Daily Mail last year: “I had a mole [on] my head that just grew and grew. I was a Cabinet minister at the time, not in my current job, but it was obviously the first time that the C-word had been used in terms of my own health, so that makes you sit up.

“But I was blessed. It was not a life-threatening cancer and it was caught relatively early.”

The Chancellor lost both of his parents to cancer, his father, Sir Nicholas Hunt in 2013 aged 82, and his mother, Lady Meriel Hunt, aged 84 in 2022.

‘They’re going through the same horrible things, that sadly, we all have to go through from time to time’