A speech by The Duke of Cambridge at the Royal Marsden Hospital dinner

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.  It gives me enormous pleasure to welcome you to Windsor Castle for this special evening.

I am exceptionally proud to be President of The Royal Marsden, an incredible hospital and a world-class cancer centre carrying out ground breaking work, influencing the treatment of cancer both nationally and internationally.

I have experienced this brilliant work first hand during several visits to The Royal Marsden.  Only last year, I visited the Chelsea hospital and saw for myself some of the complex and pioneering surgery that takes place on a daily basis.

The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity is a crucial part of the life-saving work of the hospital.  It is the charity that helps to provide the best state-of-the-art facilities for modern cancer care.  These include the theatre suite and Critical Care Unit in Chelsea, the surgical da Vinci robot, the latest radiotherapy machine CyberKnife, and the inspiring Oak Centre for Children and Young People.  It is the support of the charity which enables The Royal Marsden to give patients throughout the United Kingdom the very best cancer care available anywhere in the world.

Philanthropic support at The Royal Marsden goes back a very long way. It was a charitable gift which enabled William Marsden to build the Free Cancer Hospital in 1851 the first in the world dedicated to researching and treating cancer.

We owe a great deal to this early financial support.  It is in this tradition of philanthropy that The Royal Marsden remains a leader in cancer treatment.

The generous investment in The Royal Marsden by Ralph Lauren, a dedicated supporter of cancer research and who is here with us here tonight, continues this deep-rooted history of philanthropic giving.

The Ralph Lauren Corporation has been committed to the fight against cancer and has supported programmes in cancer care and prevention for many, many years.  It will now be joining together with The Royal Marsden to extend their work into the United Kingdom.

Incredibly generously, they will fund The Ralph Lauren Centre for Breast Cancer Research, a world-class research facility at The Royal Marsden’s Chelsea hospital.  The state-of-the-art centre will set a benchmark for breast cancer research.

I am enormously grateful to Ralph Lauren for his generosity, and to all of you who so kindly support the hospital.  You should know that what you do saves lives and gives hope to thousands of people. 

Thank you for so much coming tonight, and I hope you have a wonderful evening. Thank you.