King of spades

Return to work as Charles digs in and Kate & Wills host garden party

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

KING Charles and senior royals were still hard at work yesterday after a long weekend of Coronation celebrations.

The monarch, 74, broke ground for a new laboratory to help to speed up the development of net zero aviation in his first official engagement since being crowned.

He toured Cambridge University's Whittle Laboratory, which has recently secured funding to develop a new £58million lab.

As he walked to perform the breaking of the ground, where a lump of mud was visible on the grass, he teased: "Don't tell me it's already been done?"

The green-fingered royal joked before digging up the turf: "It's very unfair. I was rather looking forward to doing a bit of gardening.

But he still had time to help a dignitary whose heel was stuck in the grass. Dame Polly Courtice, emeritus director of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, said: "He was very kind. He gallantly supported me."