Following a brief hospital stay due to side effects from his cancer treatment last week, King Charles III made his first public appearance on Tuesday.
After experiencing some transient symptoms, Charles, 76, on Thursday postponed all of his appointments for the remainder of the day and Friday on the advice of his physicians, according to Buckingham Palace.
The brief hospital stay of a few hours was considered a “minor bump” in his medical path by officials.
At his first appearance of the week, Charles was beaming as he presented awards to prominent individuals, such as Katarina Johnson-Thompson, the current world heptathlon champion, who received a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her contributions to athletics, at Windsor Castle, west of London.
Johnson-Thompson said afterwards the monarch “seemed in good spirits. You know it’s long, all day, because so many people are getting honoured today.
“So he seems in really good spirits and I’m happy to see that he’s fit and well.”
Gardner and broadcaster Alan Titchmarsh, who received a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), also praised Charles’s “boundless energy”.
Other engagements later in the week will include the king’s weekly meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
A small number of appointments, however, had been rescheduled ahead of a state visit that Charles and his wife Queen Camilla will make to Italy next week.
Charles announced he had been diagnosed with an unspecified cancer in February last year.
He returned to work within two-and-a-half months and gradually ramped up his duties during the rest of 2024, including making several foreign trips which took him as far as Australia and Samoa.
Just six weeks after Charles’s cancer announcement came the news that his daughter-in-law Catherine, Princess of Wales, had also been diagnosed with cancer and had begun chemotherapy.
Catherine, who is married to heir to Charles’s eldest son Prince William, said in January that she was now in remission
