Prince William held a top-secret meeting shortly before Princess Kate stepped back into the public spotlight for the first time since announcing her cancer diagnosis.
Kates’s appearance at Trooping the Colour in June 2024 was her first public engagement since sharing the news that she was undergoing preventative treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer in March.
In the days before her brave outing at the event, her husband William held a hush-hush meeting with MI6, the British Intelligence Service, which wasn’t publicised in advance.
The meeting was made known in the Court Circular, a list of official royal engagements from the previous day.
The entry for the heir to throne’s meeting was pretty low on detail, reading simply: “The Prince of Wales this afternoon visited the Secret Intelligence Service”.
William has visited the Secret Service, which protects the UK from risks abroad, on several occasions, and even spent three weeks working with MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to see how the UK’s security and intelligence agencies work back in 2019.
The royal spent his first week in spy work at MI6, also known as SIS, before working at the Security Service MI5 where he saw counter-terrorism investigations on British soil.
His final week was spent at GCHQ, in Cheltenham, which monitors communications for potential security threats in the UK.
William later said of his experience that: “Spending time inside our security and intelligence agencies, understanding more about the vital contribution they make to our national security, was a truly humbling experience.
“These agencies are full of people from everyday backgrounds doing the most extraordinary work to keep us safe. They work in secret, often not even able to tell their family and friends about the work they do or the stresses they face.”
“They are driven by an unrivalled patriotism and dedication to upholding the values of this country,” he continued, adding: “We all owe them deep gratitude for the difficult and dangerous work they do.”
The Royal Family has close ties to the Secret Service and the late Queen was “from time to time briefed by Chiefs, with one former spy boss saying he was “‘struck by the extraordinary range and depth of her international problems and by the clear evidence that she reads our intelligence reports with close attention'”, according to the SIS website.
Explaining the purpose of a previous visit William made to the Secret Intelligence Service in June, royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told Newsweek was part of the monarchy’s longstanding support for British intelligence as well as his apprenticeship for when he takes over the monarchy from Charles.
Kate Middleton out a video earlier this month to reveal she had completed chemotherapy, along with footage offering an in-depth look into William and Kate’s life with their three children, Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, nine, and Prince Louis, six.
Filmed in Norfolk last month by one of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s favourite film-makers, Will Warr, the Waleses can be seen exploring a woodland area, open fields and their favourite beach close to their Anmer Hall home.
The Princess of Wales, 42, has said she hopes to undertake “a few more public engagements in the coming months when I can”, and returned to work at Windsor Castle last week, The Sun reports.
