How German is the royal family?

King Charles makes first state visit to Germany

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30 March 2023

Good evening, King Charles has become the first British sovereign to address the federal parliament in Berlin, opening his speech in German before alternating with English several times. He highlighted the cultural connections between the UK and Germany, from Bach and Byron to Henning Wehn and Monty Python to Kraftwerk and The Beatles. There are close national ties and, for the British monarch, there are personal ones, too. Hollie Clemence Executive Editor

BEHIND THE SCENES How German is the royal family? King Charles is in Germany for his first overseas state visit – which has given him the opportunity to dine with some of his more distant relatives. At a state dinner at Schloss Bellevue in Berlin, the official residence of the German president, King Charles pledged to "strengthen the connections" between the UK and Germany. Politicians and diplomats attended the banquet, including President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former chancellor Angela Merkel. Three of King Charles's German first cousins once removed were also rumoured to be in attendance: Bernhard, Philipp and Xenia. Known respectively as the Margrave of Baden and the Prince and Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the small family reunion gave "a brief glimpse into the faded world of European royalty, with its tangled family trees and quadruple-barrelled names", said The Times. Read more

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH . . . The 3D printing food revolution Your kitchen could have its own "personal digital chef" one day, say researchers – that's if they can perfect the technology behind the world's first 3D printed cheesecake. Last week, a team of engineers at Columbia University in New York used an array of "edible food 'ink'" to print the dessert. It took them 30 minutes and they used crackers, peanut butter, chocolate spread, banana puree, strawberry jam, cherry juice and icing, said the BBC's Newsround. All ingredients were mashed into paste and the printer was combined with a laser to cook the food. Once the various items were printed, cooked and layered together "it tasted like something I hadn't tried before", said Jonathan Blutinger, an engineer at the university's Creative Machines Lab. But "I rather enjoyed it", he added. Read more

TODAY'S BIG QUESTION UK's 'green day': is net zero achievable? 'Powering up Britain' plan slammed as 're-announcements, reheated policy and no new investment' Read more

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WHAT THE SCIENTISTS ARE SAYING… The Pill is linked to breast cancer Taking the Pill and other forms of hormonal contraception increases the risk of breast cancer by 25%, a University of Oxford study has found. The researchers looked at data on 10,000 women under the age of 50 who had been diagnosed with breast cancer between 1996 and 2017, and compared their history of contraceptive use with that of a control group of 18,000 women who had not had breast cancer diagnosed. All forms of hormonal contraception, including the newer progesterone-only Pill and the coil, were found to increase the risk of the disease by between 23% and 32%, depending on the women's age. It's the first study to find a clear link between the Pill and breast cancer, but the researchers stressed that the overall risk of the disease in younger women remains very low.

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picture of the day Victory for Arsenal at Emirates Stadium Bayern Munich's Maria Luisa Grohs fails to save a goal by Arsenal's Frida Maanum, which helped book the London team a place in the Champions League semi-finals for the first time since 2013. Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images

Good week for... The Crystal Palace dinosaurs, which are to be saved from the brink of extinction, thanks to a £5m Lottery Heritage grant to restore them. The dinosaurs were erected in the 1850s, when the Great Exhibition moved to Crystal Palace; they received a Grade I listing in 2007. But lately, large cracks have been appearing in the statues, and in 2020 they were put on an at-risk register.

Bad week for... Charles Bronson, who lost his parole board bid to be released from prison. The convicted armed robber, now known as Charles Salvador, has spent most of the past five decades behind bars for a series of violent attacks and for holding prison staff hostage.

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instant opinion 'Hotel rooms provide a perverse incentive to illegal migration' Your digest of analysis from the British and international press from the past seven days "If evidence were needed of Labour's disconnection from the concerns of most voters," says The Telegraph in an editorial, "it is in the party's response to the small boats crisis." The "immediate problem" facing our country is where to house the thousands of people trying to claim asylum after making the Channel crossing. The government "wants to move the migrants to camps" and Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has told MPs that ferries might also be used as accommodation. The opposition's Yvette Cooper "maintained that speeding up processing is the answer, wilfully ignoring the fact that the sheer number of arrivals is what is slowing it down", and "failing to offer an alternative" to the camps plan. But with some 50,000 migrants currently housed in hotels, the paper argues, "the very idea that, if you can get to Britain, a hotel room awaits is a perverse incentive to illegal migration". Jenrick "is adopting the only feasible approach". Read more

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DOWN TO BUSINESS Thursday afternoon markets Brent crude was rallying back towards $80 a barrel as banking fears eased. There were also supply disruption fears after oil companies operating in the Kurdistan region of Iraq were forced to stop production. FTSE 100: 7,622.79, up 0.77% Dax: 15,533.00, up 1.33% Dow: 32,765.09, up 0.15% Dollar: £1 = $1.2372, up 0.50% Euro: £1 = €1.1337, down 0.11% Brent crude: $79.13, up 1.09% Gold: $1,973.20, up 0.32%

WIT & WISDOM "Art frees us from the tyranny of the mean, mode and median, which exist nowhere but on a spreadsheet." Ben Wright in The Daily Telegraph

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