King Charles III kicks off return to work with audience with Prime Minister Sunak

Feb. 22 (UPI) -- King Charles III met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Buckingham Palace in London for the first time since going public with his cancer diagnosis earlier this month.

Cameras were briefly permitted for the traditional Wednesday afternoon audience, a weekly business meeting between the prime minister and the monarch that is normally held in private, to mark the king's return to front-line royal duties after undergoing treatment.

The Christmas-New Year holidays and a spell in hospital in January meant the pair had not met in person for 10 weeks, with the king resting up between treatments at his Sandringham estate 110 miles north of the capital.

Footage from the meeting showed Charles looking well but speaking with a somewhat croaky voice.

Prince William has been standing in for his father carrying out public engagements but the king continued to work with the trademark red boxes containing government business the monarch is required to review and sign being brought to him daily at the north Norfolk county estate.

The king told Sunak he had been overwhelmed by the thousands of messages of support he had received.

"I've had so many wonderful messages and cards, it's reduced me to tears most of the time," the king told the prime minister as he greeted him in the palace's ornate "audience room."

"Wonderful to see you looking so well," said Sunak as he shook hands with Charles, the pair chatting momentarily before the press exited and they got down to business in a meeting that lasted around 45 minutes.

The 75-year-old king was diagnosed with cancer after a hospital stay for a procedure to treat a benign prostate enlargement in January. The palace has steadfastly declined to reveal the form of cancer he is suffering from, except that it is not prostate cancer.