Down-to-earth king charles changed the royal family after years of secrecy

As well as his family, King George VI was also kept in the dark regarding his own declining health. His official biographer, John Wheeler-Bennett, writes: "He was not told that he was

suffering from cancer - nor, in so far as is known, did he ever know it." Following their father's death, both Princess Margaret and the then-Princess Elizabeth noted that they

were left in the dark too. Princess Margaret told a friend that her father had died "just as he was starting to get better", and the late Queen wrote to Dwight D Eisenhower:

"It is difficult to grasp the fact that he has left us; he was so much better, and so full of ideas and plans for the future". King Charles's willingness to share details of

his cancer diagnosis - even though the type of cancer remains unknown - not only shows a welcome sense of transparency but also highlights particular health issues. When it was announced in

January that the King was set to be admitted to hospital for an enlarged prostate, the NHS's website page on the topic received eleven times more visits than the previous day. The late

Queen Mother had an operation for colon cancer in 1966 but chose to remain silent about it for the rest of her life - until her death aged 101 in 2002. At the time she went into King Edward

VII Hospital in Marylebone, the public was told that she had been admitted for "observation". Just four days later, it was revealed that she had gone into hospital for a procedure

for "the relief of a partial bowel obstruction". A rumour that she had had a colonoscopy appeared in her obituary for The Times in 2002, although her official biographer William

Shawcross once appeared to claim this was "not true". He added that, despite this, "the cancer from which she had suffered from was serious".