King Charles has approached his battle with cancer with a level of openness rarely seen within the Royal Family.

At 77, the King disclosed his health challenges in 2024 after receiving treatment for an enlarged prostate, marking the first instance of his public discussion on the matter.

Subsequently, six weeks later, an official statement revealed that he was facing a distinct type of cancer.

This candidness marked a shift from the traditional secrecy of the Palace, as highlighted by royal biographer Robert Hardman, especially when compared to the era of King George VI, who faced lung cancer.

“No previous announcement on a monarch’s health had been so transparent,” Hardman noted in his comprehensive biography of King Charles. “In contrast, George VI’s diagnosis was cloaked in euphemisms that left him partly unaware of his own situation.”

This open approach also contrasts sharply with the policies during Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, where she maintained that the health issues of royals should be kept private.

It meant that not a soul was aware that Charles, then Prince of Wales, had experienced a cancer scare years before his 2024 diagnosis.

After Charles ascended the throne, both he and the Princess of Wales – who is in remission from cancer – have shared their personal experiences in the hope of inspiring preventative action and fostering a sense of solidarity.

King Charles has navigated his cancer journey with unprecedented honesty for a member of the Royal Family – but he had a secret cancer scare ‘years before’ the 2024 diagnosis

The double cancer diagnoses hit straight at the heart of the Royal Family when Charles and Kate were admitted to The London Clinic in Marylebone at the beginning of 2024. 

While Kate underwent ‘planned abdominal surgery’, Charles received treatment for a ‘benign prostate enlargement’. 

After the King and Princess of Wales were discharged from the hospital, it was ‘royal business as usual’ at Buckingham Palace. 

Mr Hardman revealed how the rest of the family continued their planned engagements, noting Queen Camilla ‘cancelled nothing’. 

There was a flurry of activity as Camilla marked the centenary year for Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House at Windsor Castle, travelled to Bath for a charity event, and inaugurated a Maggie’s cancer care centre at the Royal Free Hospital in London. 

Camilla always kept the focus of these events on the host and guests, but when someone ‘ventured’ to ask about the ‘boss’, her reply was always the same. 

With a smile, she would tell well-wishers: ‘He’s getting on, he’s doing his best.’ 

Mr Hardman suggested the royal family was keeping up appearances while trying to reassure Britons of stability after Charles and Kate’s double health scare at the start of the New Year. 

The monarch, 77, who was diagnosed in 2024, first revealed his health struggles after he underwent treatment for an enlarged prostate. After he was discharged from the hospital, it was ‘business-as-usual’ for the rest of the royal family, including Queen Camilla (pictured), which made the cancer announcement a ‘genuine shock’, according to biographer Robert Hardman 

This is why Charles’s cancer announcement triggered a ‘feeling of genuine shock’ across the country when the diagnosis was made public on February 5, the royal biographer continued. 

 The statement explained that a ‘schedule of regular treatments’ was underway after the procedure for ‘benign’ prostate enlargement had revealed a ‘separate’ form of cancer. 

All public-facing duties were postponed while the King remained ‘wholly positive’ about the future, the message read.

Mr Hardman praised Camilla’s sense of duty as he noted the Queen did not betray her ‘personal’ connection to the disease when she visited Royal Free Hospital until Palace aides and officials had agreed to a plan. 

A member of staff told the author: ‘The secret was not out. 

‘So she had to go to a Maggie’s cancer care centre to see patients and their relatives without being able to let a crumb drop that she had a personal stake in this.’ 

The last British monarch who was diagnosed with cancer was King Charles’s grandfather, George VI, who died from the disease in 1952 as Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne. 

‘Cancer is a very scary word if you’re a king or anyone else,’ Mr Hardman recalled a senior aide telling him. 

Although the diagnosis had come as a ‘big shock’, Charles – then the Prince of Wales – had endured a cancer scare some years prior that no one knew about until Mr Hardman’s biography was published. Pictured: Charles during his video address last December when he revealed his cancer treatment would be scaled down in the new year 

The royal author shared an insider’s account of how the Palace ‘handled’ Charles’s diagnosis and the issue of how it would be communicated to the public without stirring panic and speculation.

This process began with a ‘very matter-of-fact meeting’, he continued. 

Charles was typically practical as he assessed ‘the things that will now have to be programmed in’ while receiving treatment. 

Although the diagnosis had come as a ‘big shock’, Charles – then the Prince of Wales – had endured a cancer scare some years prior that no one knew about until Mr Hardman’s biography was published. 

Coupled with his ‘close involvement’ with cancer organisations and charities, his own experiences had given Charles a ‘deeper understanding of the disease than most’, the author wrote. 

Elsewhere in the book, Mr Hardman wrote that Charles’s stoic approach was not without frustrations. 

Charles felt the weight of his illness after he received the diagnosis so soon after becoming King. 

‘He is frustrated,’ Mr Hardman recalled Charles’s friend, Lord Chartres, telling him. 

‘He has begun to inhabit the role for which he was preparing for so long, and that has released all sorts of things in him, while he is still very understandably concerned about the maintenance and continuation of things he loves.’

Charles was the Prince of Wales for a historic 64 years before he became Britain’s King following the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on September 8, 2022. 

The double cancer diagnoses hit straight at the heart of the Royal Family when Charles and Kate were admitted to The London Clinic in Marylebone at the beginning of 2024.

He had been on the throne for less than two years before the cancer diagnosis but, instead of slowing down, Charles was raring to return to work after a tremendous outpouring of public support that ‘energised’ him. 

It had been a ‘tremendous’ reward after Charles decided to share health updates with unprecedented honesty, Mr Hardman explained. 

He explained that the late Queen, who took a more conservative approach to such matters, was ‘quite cross’ when the Palace explained she had been hospitalised for gastroenteritis in 2013. 

Her Majesty felt the statement went too ‘far’, so the phrase ‘enlarged prostate’ in Charles’s first health bulletin on January 17, 2024, was a ‘small but significant indication of the tonal shift in royal communications’ under her son’s reign. 

Charles’s decision to share his diagnosis, made in consultation with his private secretary Sir Clive Alderton, was ultimately driven by ‘medical data’. 

By opening up about his experience, Charles had hoped to encourage other men suffering get checked and seek treatment for the prostate condition. 

Since then, Charles has returned to public duties with gusto – including carrying out two overseas royal tours to Australia and Samoa in October 2024 and Canada the following May.

He is scheduled to fly 15,000 miles on foreign tours this year, after Charles received a major boost in his cancer battle. 

In an unprecedented video message last December, the King revealed his cancer treatment would be significantly scaled back in the New Year – describing his recovery as a ‘personal blessing’. 

The video was shown as part of ‘Stand Up To Cancer 2025’, a joint campaign by Cancer Research UK and Channel 4.

In his message, the monarch stressed the importance of cancer screening programmes in enabling early diagnosis while reflecting on his cancer journey. 

Sharing the ‘good news’ that his treatment will be scaled back, Charles addressed the nation: ‘Indeed, today I am able to share with you the good news that thanks to early diagnosis, effective intervention and adherence to “doctors’ orders”, my own schedule of cancer treatment can be reduced in the new year.

‘This milestone is both a personal blessing and a testimony to the remarkable advances that have been made in cancer care in recent years; testimony that I hope may give encouragement to the 50 per cent of us who will be diagnosed with the illness at some point in our lives.’ 

Ending the message with an appeal, he highlighted the new, national Screening Checker that allows people to check whether they are eligible for breast, bowel or cervical cancer screening. 

‘This December, as we gather to reflect on the year past, I pray that we can each pledge, as part of our resolutions for the year ahead, to play our part in helping to catch cancer early.

‘Your life – or the life of someone you love – may depend upon it.’