Marina Strange is 90 and lives alone. She had a heart attack last week, her third in two years. It took two hours for an ambulance to reach her. Marina was impressed.
“I was surprised the ambulance came within two hours. I thought that was very good,” she told Sky News.
Marina also has an untreatable tumour, so she’s gotten to know the hospital well over the last few years, and this is the service she’s come to expect.
Marina was one of 7,678 patients to arrive at the care of Royal Berkshire NHS Trust by ambulance so far this winter, where Sky News has spent the past few months speaking to patients, consultants and those responsible for running the hospital.
Far from being an extreme example, the hospital is performing close to or even outperforming the national average in most measures. The experiences we’ve seen are normal for NHS patients in 2025.
Marina Strange, 90, was impressed that an ambulance reached her within two hours after she had a heart attack
On 9 January we were scheduled to come and film with the respiratory ward. It was too busy for us to come in.
We spoke to Chief Executive Steve McManus about it:
“Our ward occupancy at the moment is running around 99% of our beds, so we are absolutely full,” he said.
“Almost half of [our respiratory unit] has been given over for patients with flu – and we’ve got a lot of very unwell patients at the moment. Each morning over the last few days we’ve been starting the day with another 20-30 patients in the emergency department waiting for beds, so the pressures are really significant.”
Flu and other viruses, like norovirus and now also COVID, tend to peak around the winter months when people spend more time indoors in close proximity to one another.
This year’s surge was particularly bad. It’s on the decline again now, but peaked in early January at a level almost twice as high as last winter.
Bed occupancy in Royal Berkshire has averaged 94.7% this winter.
Again, far from being an outlier, this is only slightly worse than the average across England of 93.6%. The recommended maximum to achieve efficient operations and transfer between emergency care and other hospital departments is 92%, so at least 8% of beds should be free at any one time.
That has only been achieved on ten days out of 60 this winter across England. All of those days were between 21 December and New Year’s Day, so for the entire rest of winter the service has been over capacity.
We came back to Royal Berkshire the next day – 10 January – and spoke to Dr Omar Mafousi, the clinical lead at the hospital. He explained how a lack of beds in the main hospital affects the emergency care his team can provide.
“We say every year it gets a little worse. This year has felt worse than any other year that I remember and I’ve been a consultant for 15 years in emergency medicine.
“We can’t [have patients in A&E long term]. We’ve only got 20 major cubicles but 25 waiting for a bed. Some are on chairs, some are in the waiting room, but we have no space to bring patients off an ambulance to see and examine them.”
“Almost every single bay is full, there’s just one free at the moment. There are patients waiting to be transferred to the wards, and while we’ve been here in the last couple of minutes two more patients have been brought in by ambulance. Things in the emergency department change very very quickly”.
Dr Omar Mafousi has been a consultant in emergency medicine for 15 years
Accident and emergency
We’d first spoken to Dr Mafousi in the emergency department on Wednesday 4 December. It was at the beginning of winter and the number of flu cases had yet to really spike.
At 1pm 191 patients had already come through. Dr Mafousi says these kind of numbers are the “new norm”.
“We probably see about 480-500 patients a day on busy days, sometimes over 500 on really busy days. That’s becoming more and more frequent.
“Attendances are going up and up and up year-on-year and we are struggling. We are trying to cope as best we can and give patients the best care we can, but that’s not always possible.”
In 2010 NHS England set a standard of no more than 5% of patients waiting more than four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged.
That target hasn’t been met in a decade. Every winter since COVID it’s gotten higher than 20% – four times higher than the target.
In December it was 28.9%. At major A&Es (not speciality centres or minor injuries units), it was 44.7%, almost one in two.
Again Royal Berkshire is fairly normal – 5,293 of the 11,972 patients at the major A&E (44.2%) waited longer than four hours.
At the time we were there, 14 patients had been waiting over 15 hours.
“Without a doubt that is too long,” said Dr Mafousi. “That’s not what anyone wants. No one in this Trust wants that to happen.”
There used to be a bit of respite in summers, when more beds were free from winter virus patients and people could flow more quickly and easily through the system.
Waits in the middle of summer now are worse than even the most dangerous winter peaks of years gone by.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine estimated that waits longer than four hours at A&E had contributed to 23,000 excess deaths in 2022.
Ambulance handover delays
A&E delays don’t just affect the patients who are at hospital, they also make it more difficult to treat new patients. Part of the reason it takes so long to get ambulances out to people like Marina when they have heart attacks is because of “handover delays”.
The NHS guidance allows a standard of 15 minutes from the ambulance’s time of arrival at A&E to having handed over care of the patient to A&E staff.
If A&Es are full, ambulances can’t offload their patients, so they aren’t available to get out to see new patients.
At Royal Berkshire this winter the average has been 25 minutes. That’s not far off double the time it should take, but again that’s better than average. In England as a whole it’s 40 minutes, up from 32 minutes over the same dates last year.
One in seven ambulance handovers now takes over an hour. That figure has more than trebled in just the last four years.
As well as meaning potentially worse care for the patient in the ambulance, handover delays ultimately contribute to delayed response times as well.
Ambulance calls are of course categorised by seriousness, with the most serious life-threatening cases put into Category 1 – usually for people that aren’t breathing.
People experiencing heart attacks, like Marina, should usually go into Category 2 – emergency cases. The target is that an ambulance should arrive for these patients within 18 minutes.
In December the average wait across England for these patients was over 47 mins, almost three times as long. That was slightly worse than last year, but in fact better than December 2022 and 2021. In 2022 it peaked at a scarcely believable 1 hour and 32 minute average.
In the last pre-pandemic year it was 27:57 in December and 20:55 in January – still over target but not to the same scale as now.
In total, more than 600,000 hours have been lost to ambulance handover delays this winter. The cost to the ambulance service of 600,000 hours of time is upwards of £100m.
Crumbling infrastructure
Part of the problem is capacity. Royal Berkshire opened in 1839 and parts of that original building are still in use to this day. Other parts can’t be used anymore because they’ve fallen in to disrepair.
One building hasn’t been in use for more than ten years. £2.5m has been spent to keep it from collapsing. £15m would need to be spent to make it useable. The Trust is now considering filling the building with concrete to make it safer.
A hospital that is running out of space and money has no alternative but to waste both.
Plans have been approved for a new hospital at a different site, to replace Royal Berkshire, as part of the previous government’s plan to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030.
Labour have since branded those plans “uncosted and undeliverable”, and have said work can’t start at that site until 2037 at the earliest.
The estimated cost is already over £100m and could be four times higher by the time it’s ready.
But it’s not just the main hospital where space is short.
Colin Waters is another Royal Berkshire patient we spoke to. He’s been there ten days after a car ran him over, fracturing his leg and dislocating his ankle.
He’s stable now and doesn’t actually need to be on the acute ward anymore, but he still needs some care.
Colin Waters had been at Royal Berkshire for ten days when we spoke to him, after a car ran him over, dislocating his ankle and fracturing his leg
He’s due to be transferred to a community hospital where he can receive physiotherapy and start his rehabilitation, but no space has opened up.
There have been an average of over 200 patients a day across Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire who are “fit to be discharged” but still occupying a hospital bed because no safe alternative care setting is available. It peaked on 25 January at over 300 patients.
Across the country it peaked on 1 February. There were a total of 13,894 patients remaining in hospital who no longer needed to be there. In many cases, like Colin’s, they will not be receiving the specialist care they actually need at that time.
All of those full beds contribute to patients not being able to flow through the system from A&E, which adds to the ambulance handover delays. But they also mean that people have to wait longer to book in operations they need.
The waiting list for routine operations currently stands at 7.5m – or more than one in eight people in the country. 221,889 people on that list have been waiting for treatment for over a year.
That number is 120 times higher than before the pandemic.
Among Royal Berkshire’s patients alone, there are more than 60,000 on the list and almost 3,000 of them have been waiting over a year.
The ailments people need operating on to fix don’t go away while the wait goes on. They affect quality of life at a minimum, and in many cases will require ongoing care from other NHS services, or could reach the level where it becomes an emergency that adds to the pressure on the ambulance service or A&E.
Simon Shurey, another patient we spoke to, is a classic example of someone with a multitude of complex and competing healthcare needs that affect him daily, but also occasionally extend to requiring emergency care.
He’s had asthma all his life. Five years ago he was diagnosed with COPD, a lung condition that makes breathing difficult. And six months ago he was put into a coma after developing sepsis following a kidney infection.
He says he’s waited up to two days for a ward bed on previous visits.
When we spoke to him on 19 December, he had been in hospital for five days, having been rushed in by an ambulance because of flu.
He had to be kept in a side room to stop his infection spreading to other patients. Like Marina, he’s also grateful to healthcare workers sensitive to the pressures on them, despite the multitude of health concerns he’s facing.
“Every time you come in – and I use the hospital a fair bit lately, sadly – it’s getting worse for them. There seems to be so much pressure on them.”
Health anxiety
One of the reasons for the increased pressure on healthcare workers in recent years – in addition to increased medical issues – is because people are more concerned and aware of their health, in a way in which they weren’t before the pandemic.
Dr Amrit Sharma runs four GP surgeries near Royal Berkshire. He says that since COVID there has been an increase in health anxiety, and people presenting with physical symptoms that extend from mental health issues.
“The level of appointments have changed significantly. That’s got to be around anxiety. That’s what we see every day. People are more fearful and anxious about their health.
“Some awareness [of personal health] is needed to catch things like cancers, but our concern is that we’re seeing young people coming in with self-limiting illnesses, or symptoms that are physical but related to mental health conditions, like chest pains or palpitations or breathing problems.”
More than a million people who tried to reach their GP in December couldn’t get through, despite there being more appointments than ever before.
There were 40m appointments in December 2024, compared with less than 30m in 2018.
Health anxiety is something that Dr Mafousi says also contributes to more pressure and longer waits in emergency care.
“I see people who don’t need to be here, I see people who need to be here but have come here a bit late, I’ve seen people who are just concerned, I see people sent by their friends because their friends are concerned, there’s a combination of all this.
“There’s a lot of anxiety after Covid and we’ve seen that. Young people with chest pain which they’ve had for a few minutes and are concerned they’ve had a heart attack. There’s a lot of little things which before would have been nothing but now are something.”
Whether it’s increased anxiety or increased illness, the demand on the NHS is at unprecedented levels and it simply isn’t able to cope. Targets are being missed in pretty much every department, and the ultimate result of missed targets is worse health or an increased chance of death for patients all over the country.
There are hundreds of other stories like Marina’s, Colin’s and Simon’s that could be told every day from all parts of the country.
We’ve spent time in just one hospital. And it’s a hospital that is performing in a fairly typical way, for England in 2025. Thousands of patients are seeking treatment every day in hospitals that are performing worse than this.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open-source information. Through multimedia storytelling, we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
It is “difficult” to give a “cast iron guarantee” that lives won’t be lost because of a coal tip disaster, the deputy first minister of Wales has told Sky News.
Nearly 60 years since the Aberfan disaster, which killed 144 people when coal waste slid down the side of a mountain into a school, £130m has been invested in securing waste left behind by coal mining operations.
Earlier this year, the Welsh government said up to £600m could be needed to secure coal tips across the nation.
Politics latest: Follow live updates
Rescuers search for bodies in the aftermath of Aberfan disaster, Oct 1966. Pic: AP
Olivia White, who lives beneath a disused coal heap in Cwmtillery that has been deemed a potential risk to public safety, says she is living with “horrific fear every day, waking up thinking we’re lucky we’re here again today”.
Ms White’s home was one of around 40 evacuated when part of the coal tip collapsed last year. She says she will never forget opening the door and “thick, dirty sludge pouring through”.
Huw Irranca-Davies visits residents in Cwmtillery. Pic: Welsh government
She warned: “I think it is going to take somebody to die or something awful to happen until they realise how serious this is. That’s what it feels like. Aberfan just lingers over me all the time”.
Her neighbour, Zara Cotterell, says it was “very lucky” that children weren’t playing outside at that time.
She says: “It was 7.30pm, if it was 5.30pm the street above would have had all the children playing; it took a car, it took a garage, it would have taken lives.”
Work is under way to secure the tip at Cwmtillery, which could collapse again, but both women say they feel “no one is listening” to them.
Rob Scholes, 75, moves through mud at the site of a mudslide in Cwmtillery, South Wales
There are 2,573 disused coal tips across Wales, 360 of which are categorised as having a potential impact on public safety.
Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies says he can give people an “absolute guarantee” that no expense is being spared to fix the problem.
However, he said it is “pretty difficult” to give a “cast iron guarantee” that people are safe.
“It’s an almost impossible question,” he said.
Cars on a street affected by a mudslide, in the aftermath of Storm Bert, in Cwmtillery last November
Mr Irranca-Davies said the Welsh government has spent the last five years assessing which tips are the most high risk and work is starting to secure them.
He added that the £600m figure is a long-term goal to totally clear the tips, not all of which are high risk.
In the autumn budget, the UK government provided the Welsh government with £25m for essential work on disused coal tips. The Welsh finance minister Mark Drakeford is seeking a £91m commitment over three years from Westminster.
Mr Irranca-Davies says it is “great” that “after years of asking” there has been a contribution from the UK government.
Wales Secretary Jo Stevens says she wants people to feel reassured that coal tips are being inspected regularly and the “significant sum of money” given in the autumn budget will deal with the risks.
Plaid Cymru says the £25m from Westminster falls short of what should be paid, adding that Wales “can’t afford to wait for a tragedy to happen”.
Delyth Jewell, a member of the Senedd for South Wales East, says the coal tips are “ticking time bombs” and “Westminster should be paying to clear these tips”.
“Money, it’s not a question of [it] should be found. Money has to be found because this is correcting a historic injustice that should never have happened,” she said.
“And if they can’t prioritise clearing the coal tips in the valleys, who do they even represent? Who do they stand for?
“The legacy of Aberfan hangs over these communities.”
UK
Pupils and teachers voice fears over ‘staggering’ decision to remove specialist police officers from London schools
London schools are at risk of “increased violence” and “gang exploitation” following the decision to remove specialist police officers, headteachers have told Sky News.
Education leaders are “urging” the Metropolitan Police to reconsider a decision to transfer 371 safer schools officers into neighbourhood policing teams next month.
Teachers warn pupils will be at “greater risk” of violence as a result – and some students told Sky News they were worried “more knives” and “more drugs” would be brought into schools.
Safer schools officers were introduced into London schools in 2009, where they help de-escalate peer-on-peer conflict and prevent youth involvement in crime.
In a letter obtained by Sky News, a group of 15 headteachers from secondary schools in northeast London have written to the Met Police warning that “without the support of safer school officers, vulnerable students may become prey to exploitation and, in turn, perpetrators of crime”.
Sam Jones, chair of The Waltham Forest Secondary Heads group, which wrote the letter, said teachers were “extremely concerned” about the withdrawal of safer school officers and they had not been consulted about the decision.
Sam Jones is the chair of The Waltham Forest Secondary Heads group
Mr Jones told Sky News that the decision was “very misguided”.
“We think that it will increase in violence, potentially increase bullying and weapons-related incidents,” he said.
Safer schools officers are a “key deterrent when it comes to gang recruitment and county lines issues,” he added.
“I think this is a huge backward step.”
Knife crime hit a record high of 16,521 offences in London in the year ending September 2024 – an 18% increase from the previous year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
A Sky News survey of secondary school teachers in England revealed almost one in five had seen pupils with knives in schools.
Students from Footsteps Trust in London said the removal of officers could make schools more violent.
“There will be more knives,” Tyrelle, 14, told Sky News. “There will be fighting, there will be drugs coming into school and no one will be there to actually stop it.”
“If anything happens outside of school you can tell them [the safer school officer] and let them know,” he added.
Tyrelle believes the Met’s decision means there will be more knives in schools
Another pupil, Mikolej, 15, said having an officer in their school had been a “good thing” that had helped young people “speak more to police officers outside of school”.
Mikolej said having an officer in school had helped young people
Chris Hall, headteacher of Footsteps Trust, told Sky News it was “quite staggering” that no one in education was consulted about the decision.
He said the school-based officers had been “very, very, valuable assets” who had helped familiarise “young people with the police in the most positive way”.
Chris Hall, the headteacher at Footsteps Trust, said the lack of consultation was ‘staggering’
“I would 100% ask them [the Met] to re-consider,” Mr Hall said.
Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy echoed calls for the police force to think again, telling Sky News she hoped the force would “sit down with all of us so that we can work together on this”.
In a letter to headteachers, the Met said the changes will come into effect from 2 May and that the decision was “not made lightly”.
The force said the changes aimed to improve their presence in the community.
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Glen Pavelin, frontline policing commander for neighbourhoods, said: “Although officers will no longer be based in schools, they will join local policing teams where they will retain strong relationships with schools to ensure that any incidents of reports of knife crime can be dealt with quickly.
“Officers will also work with local organisations and other youth-based establishments to safeguard young people, prevent victimisation and reduce crime and anti-social behaviour beyond schools.”
The Met Police announced last week it will cut 1,700 officers and staff to plug a £260m budget shortfall.
UK
How King Charles and his ‘darling’ Queen Camilla have navigated their 50-year love affair as they mark 20th wedding anniversary
Exactly 20 years ago today, the now King and Queen were married in a small, private civil ceremony in Windsor.
The wedding, which was eight years after Princess Diana’s death, divided the nation – with royal aides even fearing the newlyweds might have things thrown at them.
But on 9 April 2025, life is very different for the couple, who have appeared relaxed and happy this week on their first royal visit to Italy as King and Queen.
The King and Queen in Rome this week. Pic: Chris Jackson/Getty
In recent years, they have navigated the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the King’s ill-health, increasing Republican sentiment across the Commonwealth, and strained relationships with family members at home and abroad.
Here we look at their five-decade relationship – and how things have changed since they got married.
‘They hold each other up’
The late Queen Elizabeth II famously referred to the Duke of Edinburgh as her “strength and stay” during their 73-year marriage.
In Charles and Camilla’s relationship, humour plays a big role in coping with the demands of royal life, Kristina Kyriacou, who served as the King’s communications secretary from 2009 to 2018, tells Sky News.
“I would often see them laughing with one another – at some engagements they’d even take to the dance floor together,” she says.
The Royal Family pose for a photograph on Charles and Camilla’s wedding day. Pic: PA
The King’s Speech during the state opening of Parliament in July 2024. Pic: Reuters
King Charles and Queen Camilla are like “bookends” to one another, former BBC royal correspondent Michael Cole tells Sky News.
“They hold each other up. They’re very devoted to one another,” he says.
Fears eggs would be thrown at wedding
But it hasn’t always been easy – as many longstanding royal watchers will remember.
When they were married, in the eyes of some, Camilla was still the “third person” in her husband’s previous marriage to Princess Diana.
With the late Queen’s blessing to take her title when she died in 2022, Queen Camilla is now part of the “bedrock” of the Royal Family, according to royal experts.
During a rare interview with British Vogue to mark her 75th birthday in 2022, the Queen recalled: “I was scrutinised for such a long time that you just have to find a way to live with it.
“Nobody likes to be looked at all the time and criticised. But I think in the end, I sort of rise above it and get on with it.”
The couple with the late Queen after their blessing in Windsor in April 2005. Pic: PA
Amid lingering public discontent over the breakdown of Charles and Diana’s marriage, his second wedding was a muted affair.
It was held at the Windsor Guildhall and not broadcast live on television. Charles didn’t wear his military garb and Camilla didn’t wear white.
The late Queen didn’t attend the ceremony but was there for the reception at Windsor Castle.
Mr Cole says: “Buckingham Palace had a real fear they would have eggs thrown at them, so the ceremonial parades were kept to a minimum.”
Camilla, out of respect for Diana, took Duchess of Cornwall as her title, not Princess of Wales. Almost two decades later, however, she received the ultimate symbol of approval when the late Queen ruled that Camilla would replace her as Queen when she died.
“They’ve just gone out there consistently and done their job and I think they’ve earned respect for that,” Ms Kyriacou says. “Eventually memories fade and people instead accept people for who they are.”
Charles and Camilla on the way to their honeymoon in 2005. Pic: PA
Charles and Camilla at a polo event in June 2005. Pic: PA
The couple in February 2005. Pic: PA
“It was all done gradually,” Mr Cole says. “Step by step, the idea that they were together was introduced to the public.”
So how did it all begin?
Failed first relationship
The relationship stretches back 55 years, to when Prince Charles and Camilla Shand are thought to have met for the first time at a polo match in London in 1970.
Camilla, the daughter of an esteemed military officer, had been in an on-off relationship with Andrew Parker Bowles, a captain with The Blues and Royals regiment of the British Army.
Charles and Camilla at a polo match in 1975. Pic: Shutterstock
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Charles had only been officially invested with the title of the Prince of Wales a year earlier and was fresh out of Cambridge University and RAF training.
Having bonded over a shared love of polo and countryside pursuits, they dated for around two years before the prince left to join the Navy and Camilla rekindled her romance with Mr Parker Bowles, marrying him a year later in 1973.
Charles and Camilla leave the theatre in London in February 1975. Pic: PA
Over the years, many have cited the now King’s military commitments as the reason their initial relationship broke down.
But Mr Cole recalls it differently. “It would be wrong to say that he ‘missed the bus’ and could have married her then, but hesitated,” he says. “The fact was she loved Andrew Parker Bowles.”
He adds that at that point, Camilla would not have been considered by the Queen and her advisers to be a suitable bride for the heir to the throne because she had a “past” (as it was put then) – meaning earlier relationships before meeting Charles.
‘Third person’ in Charles and Diana’s marriage
In the years that followed, the young Prince Charles was under pressure to marry and began dating Lady Diana Spencer, the younger sister of his ex-girlfriend Sarah.
Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer pose for their engagement photo in 1981. Pic: PA
Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles at Buckingham Palace in 1984 with their children to get his OBE from the Queen. Pic: PA
By that stage, Camilla had given birth to two children, Tom in 1974 and Laura in 1978.
Diana famously told Newsnight in 1995 that “there were three of us in this marriage” – the third person being Camilla.
Camilla and Diana in October 1980. Pic: PA
Charles admitted adultery in a 1994 interview with Jonathan Dimbleby – a precursor to Diana’s explosive Newsnight interview. He confessed he had been unfaithful after their marriage “irretrievably broke down”.
Further evidence came in the form of the “Tampongate” tape, a recording of a phone call between Charles and Camilla in which they exchanged sexual innuendos.
While the contents of the call weren’t leaked until 1993 – a year after Charles and Diana announced their separation – the conversation reportedly took place in 1989, when they were both married to other people.
Charles and Camilla at the Mey Highland Games in 2003. Pic: PA
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Charles Anson, former press secretary to Queen Elizabeth II from 1990 to 1997, says that while it wasn’t palace business to be commenting on private relationships, it was an “issue” that had to be navigated carefully.
“It was a feature of life at that time and therefore something that needed to be handled,” he says. “Prince Charles and Camilla were part of the landscape.”
According to Mr Cole, it was always Charles driving their relationship in the early days.
“She was happy with her life in the countryside, with her children, and would have been quite happy to remain his mistress – she didn’t expect anything else,” he says. “But for Charles it was non-negotiable, he had to have her.”
The pair at Sandringham in March 2002. Pic: PA
Going public
The breakdown of Charles and Diana’s marriage dominated headlines as one of the biggest news stories of its time.
It wasn’t until after Diana died that Charles and Camilla officially appeared in public together – at a birthday party for Camilla’s sister Annabel Elliot at the Ritz Hotel in early 1999.
Camilla arrives at her 50th birthday party at Highgrove in July 1997. Pic: PA
However, a month before Diana’s death in Paris in the summer of 1997, Charles threw a birthday party for Camilla at his Gloucestershire country home, Highgrove.
The late Queen did not attend. She reportedly only agreed to formally meet Camilla in 2000.
Charles and Camilla pictured as a couple in public together for the first time in London in 1999. Pic: PA
The couple attend a Prince’s Foundation gala in June 2000. Pic: PA
Standing the test of time
Mr Anson, former press secretary to Queen Elizabeth II from 1990 to 1997, now describes their relationship as the “bedrock of the monarchy”.
Ultimately, it’s their love for one another which has seen their “partnership stand the test of time”, Ms Kyriacou says.
“I remember King Charles consistently referring to Queen Camilla as his ‘darling wife’. And that’s very touching – and it’s how I will remember them on their 20th wedding anniversary.”
At a Clarence House reception in March 2025. Pic: PA
In her Vogue interview, the Queen revealed they always try to make quality time for one another.
“It’s not easy sometimes, but we do always try to have a point in the day when we meet,” she said. “Sometimes it’s like ships passing in the night, but we always sit down together and have a cup of tea and discuss the day.”
Ms Kyriacou remembers this, telling Sky News: “They don’t do every single engagement together, but no matter what, they will try to share breakfast or dinner.
“Being a member of the Royal Family is a privileged position but my impression was that it must also be very lonely when you are constantly under intense public scrutiny – your inner circle is so small. So to have someone you can trust implicitly, who you can share everything with and who understands that is what carries them through.”
The King and Queen prepare donation bags with dates for Ramadan in February 2025. Pic: Reuters
Stopping for a whiskey tasting on Northern Ireland visit. Pic: Reuters
This has likely been even more important as the King navigates his cancer treatment, she adds.
“For over 50 years of public life he has been indefatigable in terms of how many engagements he takes on,” Ms Kyriacou says.
“So he tries not to draw attention to himself. He tells people just enough, but he’s still trying to be humorous, compassionate, affable. And the Queen understands this – that he cannot let his emotions come first – that his public persona has to stay very neutral.”
The couple during a visit to a Samoan village in 2024. Pic: Reuters
The King and Queen lead the Royal Family as they arrive at church on Christmas Day 2024. Pic: PA
But she will also use that “mutual respect” to be firm with him about what he needs.
“Particularly in these times of ill-health, I should imagine the Queen can temper the King’s workaholic nature and make strong suggestions to him to take more time to relax,” she says.
“Everything challenging they’ve been through will almost certainly have been halved because they’ve gone through it together.”
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