British King Charles III is celebrating his 76th birthday, marking the occasion with a visit to a surplus food festival.

The monarch is treating the day as a normal working one and carrying on with his duties despite facing a personally challenging year in which both he and Kate, the princess of Wales, were diagnosed with cancer.

The monarch will open the first two Coronation Food Hubs on the first anniversary of the launch of his Coronation Food Project, designed to bridge the gap between food need and food waste in the UK amid the cost-of-living crisis.

He will head to Deptford in south London to formally unveil the first hub, tour the centre with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and attend the surplus food festival being staged to celebrate the royal visit before virtually opening another hub in Merseyside.

The event will be a solo one for the king, with the queen, who had hoped to join him, still recovering from a nasty chest infection.

The king, in black tie, walked the red carpet on the eve of his birthday, meeting stars Denzel Washington, Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal at the glitzy global premiere of ‘Gladiator II’.

On Wednesday afternoon, he hosted a special celebrity reception at Buckingham Palace in honour of the UK’s film and television industry, where he and Camilla, who attended for part of the event, chatted with a host of famous faces, including actors Damian Lewis, Emily Mortimer and Lucien Laviscount, and “Gladiator” director Sir Ridley Scott.

Gun salutes will be fired in Green Park by The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery and at the Tower of London by the Honourable Artillery Company as part of the military’s traditional celebrations on the sovereign’s birthday, and bells will be rung at Westminster Abbey where the king was crowned in 2023.

The British monarch, like his late mother, Elizabeth II, has two birthdays, his actual one on November 14 and his official one, which falls on the second Saturday in June.

Since 1748, the monarch’s official birthday has been marked by the parade known as Trooping the Colour, which was usually held on the king or queen’s actual birthday.

Edward VII, who reigned from 1901 to 1910, was born in November.

But he celebrated officially in May or June because it was less likely to be cold and drizzly during the outdoor event.

The king’s grandfather, George VI, who was born in December, reintroduced the idea, and the late Queen Elizabeth II continued it, as has the king.

Prince Charles Philip Arthur George was welcomed into the world on November 14, 1948, at Buckingham Palace, the first child of the future Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

As the prince of Wales, he was the nation’s longest-serving heir to the throne, and he became king on September 8, 2022, after the death of his mother, the late queen.

News of the king’s cancer, undisclosed in its form, came in February after it was discovered while he was treated in hospital for an enlarged prostate in January.

He cancelled all face-to-face public duties but returned in April and has since travelled to France for D-Day commemorations, hosted an incoming state visit for the Emperor of Japan, and undertaken a recent hectic tour to Australia and Samoa with the queen, in spite of still undergoing outpatient cancer treatment. 

(dpa/NAN)