Cheery King off home to recover from surgery...and do a little state business

THE King is to recuperate at Clarence House and the Princess of Wales at home in Windsor after both were discharged from the same hospital yesterday following operations.

- Richard Palmer

It proved a double day of delight for the Royal Family, whose programme of public events has been thrown into disarray by medical treatments for Charles and his daughter-in-law Kate.

Engagements for the foreseeable future involving the pair and Prince William, who is taking time off to look after his young family, will be rescheduled.

Charles waved cheerily at well-wishers as, accompanied by Queen Camilla, he left the London Clinic.

He thanked people for their support and said he was "grateful for everyone's kind wishes" after his treatment for an enlarged prostate.

Kate, 42, left in a blacked-out car earlier yesterday after spending almost two weeks at the private hospital following major abdominal surgery.

She is "making good progress", according to Kensington Palace, but is not expected to return to public duties until after Easter with no plans to reveal further details of what exactly was wrong with her.

She William and are understood to been have forced to postpone a couple of planned foreign trips, including one to Italy.