King Charles celebrates 75th birthday

AT an age when many of his contemporaries have long since retired, King Charles III is not one to put his feet up.

The king marked his 75th birthday on Tuesday by busily highlighting causes close to his heart.

With Queen Camilla at his side, Charles visited a project that helps feed those in need by redistributing food that might otherwise go to landfills. Then he hosted a party for 400 nurses and midwives, saluting the National Health Service’s own 75th birthday. For good measure, the king appears on the cover of this month’s Big Issue, which gives marginalized people the opportunity to earn money by selling the magazine on the street.

It’s the sort of day that’s been typical of the king’s first 14 months on the throne.

The centrepiece of the public side of the King's birthday is be the official launch of his Coronation Food Project.

This is intended to tackle the double problem of increasing numbers of people unable to afford food, while millions of tonnes of surplus food is being thrown away.

Highlighting the campaign in an article in the Big Issue magazine, the King said: "Food need is as real and urgent a problem as food waste."

The King told the magazine that "cost-of-living pressures" were resulting in "too many families and individuals missing out on nutritious meals".

The project aims to create distribution hubs to connect surplus food with food banks and charities providing food parcels.

"There are one in five people in this country that are suffering what charities call 'food insecurity' - to me, they're 'hungry'," says Baroness Louise Casey, co-chair of the project.

"People are going without meals," she says.

An animation promoting the Coronation Food Project will be shown on Tuesday evening on the digital advertising hoardings at Piccadilly Circus in London.

There is a circularity to the King's launch of a food-sharing project on his birthday.

He is also marking the 75th anniversary of organizations of the same vintage, including the NHS, with 400 nurses and midwives invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

The King last week rebranded his charities as the King's Trust and King's Foundation, rather than Prince's Trust and Prince's Foundation, which will send another message of keeping working rather than slowing down or handing over the reins to the next generation.

He will be travelling to speak at the COP28 climate change summit in Dubai at the end of this month.

At the age of 75, King Charles is now the sixth longest-lived British monarch, behind Elizabeth II, Victoria, George III, Edward VIII and George II.