King Charles celebrates milestone birthday after Gladiator II premiere – live

The King has held an audience with one of the possible contenders to become the next archbishop of Canterbury.

Charles welcomed the Right Reverend Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich, to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday to appoint him as Lord High Almoner and formally present him with his Badge of Office.

The role of Lord High Almoner dates back to the 12th century and involves attending upon, or representing, the sovereign at the Royal Maundy Service.

Mr Usher is an ecologist, a keen beekeeper and the Church’s lead bishop on the environment, while the King is known for his campaigning on green issues.

The Duke of Edinburgh has presented a Hampshire tea company with the King’s Award in Sustainable Development for its work helping to improve lives of people around the world.

Ahmad Tea, based in Chandler’s Ford, is one of 29 organisations around the country to be recognised with the honour in 2024.

During his visit to the company’s headquarters, Prince Edward, who was accompanied by Countess Mountbatten of Burma and the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, was presented with a box of tea called Royal Ceylon which had been blended especially for the King.

The British family-owned company which supplies teas to 65 countries worldwide, was presented with the award in recognition of its sustainability projects, philanthropic initiatives and ethical practices.

A spokeswoman for the firm said that it donates up to 20% of its profits to local and global initiatives ranging from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association to funding a cancer hospital in Sri Lanka as well as health programmes for women in tea-growing regions of Assam and Kenya.

A “fairytale” picnic cottage enjoyed by Queen Victoria on her visits to Balmoral has been saved from ruin by a conservation charity.

Built by Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Louise, around 1850, the cottage had fallen into disrepair but has been restored to its former glory through work commissioned by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS).

Moxon Architects helped NTS develop the plans for the restoration work and contractors completed the work this autumn, having started in June this year.

They cleared rubble from inside the building, before repointing mortar and harling on the cottage walls, dismantling dormer windows and installing doors, windows and floors to make it watertight and accessible.

The cottage is situated in woodlands near Linn of Quoich on Mar Lodge Estate national nature reserve close to Braemar in Aberdeenshire.

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

Charles 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 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 Charles, with the Queen, who had hoped to join him, still recovering from a nasty chest infection.

Actress Dame Imelda Staunton has said she “absolutely adored” portraying the late Queen Elizabeth II as she received her royal title at Windsor Castle.

The 68-year-old, who earned Bafta TV and Golden Globe nominations for the role in Netflix’s hit drama The Crown, was honoured for her services to drama and charity by the Prince of Wales on Tuesday.

Asked if it felt surreal to be recognised with her damehood by Charles in the King’s Birthday Honours having played his mother, Dame Imelda told the PA news agency: “They’re two very different worlds and you have to sort of get serious about that and go, ‘We were on the television and this is for real’.

“[William and I] didn’t talk about that, but it was a huge privilege. That was two years of filming, and I absolutely adored it.

“It was of course devastating when Her Majesty died – we were filming as well, it was tricky.”

She said she was “inconsolable for quite some time” after the Queen’s death, and that subsequent filming of The Crown was “very strange”.

The Queen said she is “getting much better” as she arrived at a Booker Prize reception in her first public engagement since falling ill with a chest infection.

Camilla congratulated shortlisted authors at Clarence House on Tuesday afternoon and the winner of the prestigious literary prize will be announced in the evening.

The Queen was greeted in the Garden Room by chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, Gaby Wood, and chair of the 2024 judges, Edmund de Waal.

She shook their hands and told Ms Wood: “I’m obviously getting much better. A bit of sort of coughing going on.”

“I really wanted to come,” Camilla added.