‘Longing to let it out’: Queen Camilla on ‘difficult’ task of keeping King’s cancer diagnosis secret

Queen Camilla has opened up for the first time about the pressure she felt in the early days of King Charles′ cancer diagnosis in January 2024.

In a new eight-minute video with Dame Laura Lee, chief executive of cancer charity Maggie’s, the 79-year-old appeared emotional at times and revealed she almost “said something” about her husband’s diagnosis before it was announced.

“I was just longing to let it out but, obviously, I couldn’t,” Queen Camilla said.

Her Majesty visited the Maggie’s centre near London’s Royal Free Hospital a week before the King’s diagnosis was announced publicly, making the visit particularly poignant.

“Nobody could say anything at the time, that was quite difficult,” she admitted.

“I almost said something but, you know, I felt that it wasn’t the time to say.”

It left the Queen probing patients and families in a way that was different to the usual conversation she would have on those visits, she told Lee.

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“Normally when I went in, I was just talking to them, but I don’t know, I felt it was much more deep,” she said.

While the Queen said she didn’t “want to pry too deeply”, she was “almost questioning” people as she became one of the people the charity is designed to help.

“It made me realise even more how important these places were,” Camilla admitted.

“It had never really come back to roost at home and suddenly, your husband is diagnosed, and you think ‘Goodness I’ve been talking to all these people and now I’m the one with some relation, who’s got to help to look after my poor husband and try and understand it all’.”

But Her Majesty told Lee she’s learned that each patient handles their diagnosis differently and for some, like King Charles, it doesn’t hold them back.

“Nothing stopped him. He just said, ‘This is my way. I’m going to cope with it’,” she said.

The video was recorded in the King and Queen’s London home of Clarence House and was made to mark the charity’s 30 years of providing support to cancer patients and their families.

Queen Camilla has been president of the charity since 2008 and they have 27 centres around the UK, which give patients and their families a place to drop in, no appointment needed.

There they can talk to others, get professional support, feel at one with nature and sit in places designed to be the antithesis of hospitals and their sterile environments.