Kate to make first speech as Duchess of Cambridge

Published on 30/08/2012 15:01

The Duchess of Cambridge is to make her first speech abroad as part of the Diamond Jubilee tour.

• Kate to address staff at Malaysian Hospice

• Visit part of celebration of Queen’s 60-year reign

The Duchess is visiting South East Asian and the South Pacific with the Duke of Cambridge next month.

The visit is part of celebration’s of the Queen’s 60-year-reign.

The Cambridges’ first engagement of the visit is an orchid naming ceremony in Singapore when flowers will be named after the Duke and Duchess.

The royal couple will see an orchid named after William’s mother Diana, Princess of Wales.

Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, principal private secretary and equerry to the Cambridges, said: “The aim of the tour is to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

“The Duke and Duchess will use the tour to pay tribute - through what they do and say and who they meet - to the Queen’s lifetime and dedication to the mix of peoples and cultures that make up all of Her Majesty’s realms and the Commonwealth.

“The tour will comprise a mixture of formal and informal moments which reflect these aims and Duke and Duchess’s characters and interests.”

Kate’s speech in Malaysia will be only her second public address and reflects her interest in the hospice movement.

She is royal patron of East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices and gave her inaugural speech to volunteers and staff at the organisation’s Ipswich hospice earlier this year.

William’s interest in conservation and ecology will see the royals visit the rainforest jungles of the Malaysian state of Sabah, where they will climb up into the canopy.

Tuvalu, like the Solomon Islands, is in the South Pacific and the Duke is likely to learn about the concerns residents have about rising sea levels due to climate change.

The nation last received a royal visit in 1982 when the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were carried ashore in garland-covered “carriages” after arriving in the royal yacht Britannia.

Despite flying to the island, William and Kate are expected to receive a similar welcome and be carried from the aircraft.

Kate will take a hairdresser, paid for privately, on tour and in total the entourage helping the royals will number nine people, including the Cambridges’ adviser Sir David Manning, a former British ambassador to the US.

St James’s Palace stressed it had tried to keep travel costs down and the royals would travel by scheduled long-haul flights to and from the region and by charter to the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.

The Diamond Jubilee tour will take the royal couple to Singapore from September 11-13, on to Malaysia, where they will tour Kuala Lumpur and Sabah, from September 13-15, Solomon Islands between September 16-18, and the final stop is Tuvalu from September 18-19.