logo
King Charles tells veteran to ‘keep drinking whisky' during Lancaster Castle visit

King Charles tells veteran to ‘keep drinking whisky' during Lancaster Castle visit

Independent4 hours ago

King Charles made a memorable visit to Lancaster Castle on 9 June where he advised 101-year-old veteran Richard Brock to "keep drinking whisky'.
The monarch, who remembered Brock from last year's D-Day commemorations in Normandy, engaged in a heartfelt exchange during the reception at the castle.
The King also participated in the traditional 'ceremony of keys" outside the historic castle, a custom dating back to Queen Victoria in 1851 and last observed by Queen Elizabeth II in 2015.
While managing his cancer treatment, Charles continued his royal duties, also visiting local businesses and the newly created Whitewell Coronation Woodland Garden in the Forest of Bowland.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Revealed: The bizarre way King Charles' grandmother found out about his birth from a remote Greek island
Revealed: The bizarre way King Charles' grandmother found out about his birth from a remote Greek island

Daily Mail​

time2 hours ago

  • Daily Mail​

Revealed: The bizarre way King Charles' grandmother found out about his birth from a remote Greek island

King Charles ' grandmother was living on a remote Greek island when the future monarch was born and found out about his birth through a telegram, a royal biographer has revealed. Princess Alice, the mother of the Duke of Edinburgh, was reportedly thrilled when she finally received the news of her grandson's birth. As a member of the Greek Royal Family, Alice had spent the whole of Second World War in Athens but by 1948 she was living on Tinos - a tiny island in the Aegean sea where she had no access to a telephone. According to Ingrid Seward, a royal biographer, she wrote back to Prince Philip immediately after she received the news of the royal birth. In the telegram, she wrote: 'I think of you so much with a sweet baby of your own, of your joy and the interest you will take in all his little doings. 'How fascinating nature is, but how one has to pay for it in the anxious trying hours of confinement.' Alice would remain in Greece for a further 20 years before she returned to the UK in 1967. The princess's life is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Royal Family. A future King Charles III when he was a baby. According to Ingrid Seward, a royal biographer, she wrote back to Prince Philip immediately after she received the news of the royal birth Princess Alice of Battenberg was born Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Mary on February 25, 1885, at Windsor Castle in the presence of her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. She was born congenitally deaf but could speak clearly and lip read in several languages. While at the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, she met and fell in love with Prince Andrew, a younger son of the King of Greece - a year later the couple were wed. Alice married into the Greek Royal Family at a tumultuous time with the family exiled from the country in 1921, the same year Prince Philip was born. By 1930 she was hearing voices and believed she was having intimate relationships with Jesus and other religious figures. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic before being treated by Sigmund Freud at a clinic in Berlin. When Charles' grandmother was released from the the sanatorium in 1932, she drifted between modest German B&Bs before she eventually returned to Athens following the restoration of the Greek monarchy. Alice then found herself stranded in Nazi-occupied Greece throughout the Second World War. Due to her links to Germany, with her cousin serving as German ambassador to Greece until the start of the occupation, the Nazi soldiers wrongly assumed Alice was sympathetic to their cause. Instead when a general asked Alice if there was anything he could do for her, she bravely responded: 'You can take your troops out of my country.' During the war, she was instrumental in aiding the escape from Greece of several Jews. Alice even hid a Jewish family, the Cohen's, on the top floor of her home, just yards away from Gestapo headquarters. When the Gestapo became suspicious and questioned the Princess, she used her deafness as an excuse not to answer their questions and prevented them from entering her property. Following the war, diamonds were used from Alice's tiara so Philip could present a ring to Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen. Alice sold the rest of her jewels to create her own religious order, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, in 1949, becoming a nun. She went on to build a convent and orphanage in a poor suburb of Athens. The royal remained in Greece until 1967, when there was a Greek military coup. Alice refused to leave the country until Prince Philip sent a plane and a special request from the Queen to bring her home. She spent the final years of her life living at Buckingham Palace with her son and daughter-in-law before she died in December 1969, aged 84. The last few months of her life were fictionalised in the third season of Netflix's The Crown, played by Jane Lapotaire. The series incorrectly suggested she gave a tell-all interview with the Guardian, covering topics about her mental health condition. Shortly before her death, she wrote a heartbreaking letter to her only son, that read: 'Dearest Philip, Be brave, and remember I will never leave you, and you will always find me when you need me most. All my devoted love, your old Mama.' In 1994, 25 years after Alice's death, her son attended a ceremony in Jerusalem to honour his mother, who is buried in a crypt at Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. In honour of her courage during the war, when she saved her friends, the Cohen family, from certain death, she was given the title of Righteous Among The Nations. Prince Philip said: 'I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in distress.'

UK wildlife numbers are falling despite increase in number of trees
UK wildlife numbers are falling despite increase in number of trees

BBC News

time2 hours ago

  • BBC News

UK wildlife numbers are falling despite increase in number of trees

Wildlife numbers in the UK are falling despite a small increase in the number of trees, a new report says. The findings, published by charity the Woodland Trust, show both the quantity and variety of wildlife is going down That's despite a rise in woodland cover, which describes how much of a particular area of land is covered by trees. The conservation charity says the UK needs to improve the condition and scale of its woodlands to tackle wildlife loss. The Woodland Trust says the decline of wildlife is down to the fall in the biodiversity woodlands have seen over time. Biodiversity is all about the variety of plants, animals and other living things found in a specific environment or place. Butterflies, woodland birds, dormice and lots of different plant species have all seen a significant fall in their numbers over the years, according to the report. Ancient and veteran trees, which are really important for wildlife because of their unique characteristics which provide food and places for animals and organisms to live, have also seen a fall in numbers. "UK woodlands lack open spaces, such as glades, which allow light to reach the forest floor and young trees to grow," said Abigail Bunker who is the director of conservation and external affairs at the Woodland Trust. "There are also fewer older trees, which, along with their soils, lock in carbon from the atmosphere. Alarmingly, many British woodlands have very few - if any - ancient and veteran trees left."While woodland cover increased from 13.2% of UK land in 2020 to 13.5% in 2024, the report says just 45% of the government's targets for increased woodland was met over those four also points to recommendations from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) to increase the number of trees in the UK as part of government plans to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to also tackle climate change. What else is in the report? The Woodland Trust's report also highlights the impact woodlands have on wellbeing and communities, with nine in 10 people agreeing woodland biodiversity has a positive impact through things like birdsong or the sound of rustling leaves, according to a poll. "We are calling on the government and others to invest in the management of our woodlands, so that people and wildlife can experience the benefits of these precious ecosystems..." said Ms Bunker. "It's also vital that the government start hitting their tree-planting targets, so that there is time to grow the veteran trees of the future and help shape woodlands to better withstand challenges like new diseases, or rising temperatures."The government's Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) said, "Trees are really important for helping the planet and for protecting animals and nature."We are spending £400 million to plant more trees and are working hard to take care of our woodlands so they can help all types of wildlife."

'Damp forced us to live in bedroom for four years'
'Damp forced us to live in bedroom for four years'

BBC News

time2 hours ago

  • BBC News

'Damp forced us to live in bedroom for four years'

A woman has said she and her husband were forced to live upstairs in their home in Leeds for four years after the council failed to solve an issue with Town said the damp, from a flood under her council-owned home, caused appliances to break down, destroyed furniture and led to further health concerns for her husband, who was recovering from a serious Town said: "It destroys you, knowing the council knew the condition we were living in and that we lost everything downstairs, and did nothing to address it."A council spokesperson apologised for not fully resolving the issue, but said multiple repairs had been carried out and the house had remained "habitable". Mrs Town said the repairs to the property in Thorpe on the Hill, where she had lived for 12 years before moving to East Yorkshire at the end of last year, had included replastering the living room five times after it kept becoming damp."We lived in the bedroom for four years. The mental health [impact] from doing that in your late 40s and 50s – it's no good at all," Mrs Town said."I'm not upset, I'm angry. They wouldn't live like that, so why did they expect me to?" Mrs Town said it had become a "running joke" with builders, plasterers and plumbers when they repeatedly visited the property to fix the same issues."The council was sending plasterer after plasterer to rip off the walls and re-do them, without getting to the root cause of the damp and the mould," she explained that the damp had caused the oven and fridge-freezer to break down and work surfaces to come away from the wall in the the carpet had begun to smell and it eventually had to be removed, leaving bare floorboards, she Town said she and her husband had to take their clothes to the laundrette and they had lived on takeaways and air fryer food - even having Christmas dinner in their bedroom."It's enough to take a toll on anybody," she said. Mrs Town said that despite being in the top priority band for council housing and bidding for a new property every week, trying to downsize from their three-bedroom home, they were never able to secure said they had taken things into their own hands in December and had moved to Hornsea in East Yorkshire, which she said was "not ideal" and had been an "upheaval"."I was suffering with chest infection after chest infection, and I just said I couldn't do it anymore. Anchor Homes offered us this one, so I took it," Mrs Town said."We have lovely neighbours, but it is quiet, and I feel out of place at times."Without a car here, you are cut off. Both our families [are in Leeds], and my friends are there." 'Really angry' Mrs Town said the move had also meant the couple had to pay for further travel and accommodation when Mr Town had hospital appointments in Sheffield which he still needed to attend following a bleed on the brain eight years said Leeds City Council had been aware of Mr Town's health issues, which included a small stroke, loss of hearing and chest infections since the brain haemorrhage."Any council should not get away with making people live like that. I am really angry with them. I want them to acknowledge what they've done," she a spokesperson for Leeds City Council said repairs were carried out on several occasions in an attempt to resolve the issue at Mr and Mrs Town's home."Unfortunately, the root cause was not addressed, and the issue returned when there was heavy rainfall," they said."The property remained habitable during the tenancy, although Leeds City Council apologise for not being able to resolve the matter fully." Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store