A Royals Extra Brief

Much Ado About Lunch

I was amused to read British newspaper reports over the weekend that after many years of avoiding midday meals, King Charles III has started eating lunch for the sake of his health following his treatment for cancer. For Royals Extra readers, this is old news.

In How Two Kings Have Dealt with Serious Illness, a Royals Extra I published on March 31st, 2024, I compared the approach taken by King Charles with that of his great-grandfather, King George V, in 1928 and 1929 when a series of acute respiratory infections caused him to be absent from public duties for more than a year. I included photos that had not been seen since George V’s reign, and I described the role of Charles’s great-grandmother, Queen Mary, in strictly enforcing her husband’s care.

At the end of my article, I noted that King Charles was planning to increase his public engagements, which he has indeed done. And then I wrote:

“Queen Camilla has been doing double duty, representing the King at engagements around Britain and tending to his comfort at home. Not unlike Queen Mary, she keeps a close watch on her husband and knows how to hold the line when necessary. After decades of skipping midday meals to squeeze more work into his busy days, I am told that King Charles III is now eating lunch.”

I revisited the King’s lunchtime habits in a Royals Extra on May 5th, A Kansas City Philanthropist in King Charles’s Court, a profile of Charles III’s good friend and generous benefactor, Julia Irene Kauffman. Last week when I was visiting Kansas City to give a talk sponsored by the English-Speaking Union on George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy, I spent time with Julia Irene and saw the magnificent Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts that she opened on September 16, 2011. The surprise guest of honor at the inaugural gala that night was Prince Charles, who appeared on a video screen to praise the 316,000-square-foot building as an example of “the timeless power of creativity and expression.” He called Julia Irene Kauffman his “kindred spirit.”

When she and I spoke about the King last April, she was frank and insightful, and she described their one-on-one meetings every October when she has visited Scotland. As I wrote last May 5th,

“She has also been struck by his habit of not eating lunch. ‘One year at Birkhall [his hideaway on the monarch’s Balmoral estate in Scotland] he was drinking beet juice, and last year he had one asparagus stalk,’ she recalled. She was relieved to hear that at the urging of Camilla, he has begun to eat a proper lunch while undergoing treatment for cancer.”