EMBRACING LA DOLCE VITA

The King and Queen celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary during a state visit to Italy, just one of several foreign trips in 2025

- REPORT: JACK MALVERN

It was the Queen who gave the most succinct answer as to whether her husband might slow down in the interest of his health.

"Dream on," she told journalists during the royal couple's state visit to Italy, the second of four overseas tours in 2025 that also took them to Poland and Canada.

For a monarch undergoing treatment for cancer, the King showed no outward signs of flagging. Her Majesty, speaking in Italy, said that her husband, far from being drained by work, was sustained by it.

"It's wonderful, if you've been ill and are recovering, you're getting better, and now he wants to do more and more," she said. "That's the problem. That's what he's driven by – helping others."

The visit to Rome and Ravenna over four days in April was, perhaps, the happiest, given it coincided with the King and Queen's 20th wedding anniversary.

The couple shared a tender look, their arms around one another, as they marked the day by posing for photographs at Villa Wolkonsky, the British ambassador's residence in Rome.

They walked arm in arm down the steps of the Altare della Patria, took in the views at the Roman Forum and Colosseum and halted their convoy to pick up an ice cream.

"Twenty years – who could believe it was 20 years?" the Queen said to British journalists covering the trip. "What is the secret? I suppose it's just friendship, really; laughing at the same things, getting on with life.