2017’s busiest member of the royal family was Princess Anne, the Queen’s eldest daughter, who carried out more UK public engagements this year than Prince Harry, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge combined.
Princess Anne carried out 455 public appearances around the UK in 2017, with an additional 85 events taking place overseas.
The Times confirmed that the Princess Royal carried out the highest number of engagements during 2017, using figures compiled from the court circular by Tim O’Donovan, a retired insurance broker who has been charting royal engagements for the newspaper for the past 37 years.
‘She is always rushing around the country. I’m just amazed when I look through the court circular at what she does in a day. The amount she crams in is extraordinary. She can be up in Scotland then down to a dinner in London that evening,’ O’Donovan said of the Princess to The Times.
For the third year in a row, the Duchess of Cambridge was the royal who carried out the lowest number of engagements: in 2017, Kate undertook 63 official engagements in the UK, with 42 abroad (the majority of which will have occurred on the Cambridges’ foreign visits to Germany, Poland and France earlier this year). It’s worth bearing in mind, however, that in the latter part of the year, the Duchess suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, an acute form of morning sickness, in the early stages of her third pregnancy, which prevented her from carrying out engagements as usual.
Prince William, meanwhile, carried out 117 engagements in the UK and 54 abroad; his younger brother Prince Harry had 139 domestic appearances and 70 foreign engagements. Their grandmother the Queen made 296 appearances throughout the year.
O’Donovan said that his findings should not be seen as a league table of ‘individual royal performance,’ explaining: ‘Every engagement is different, in terms of time spent and the preparation needed, whether it be a visit, investiture or speech.’
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s next major foreign visit will come in January, when they will travel to Sweden and Norway.
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