Kate’s dad turns 75 today: Michael Middleton has seen his daughter courageously battle cancer for months – and he and Carole have been her rock

His visit to Royal Ascot with wife Carole last week told the nation that their daughter Kate is doing well as she continues her cancer treatment.

But as he turns 75 today, Michael Middleton may be thinking about how difficult this year has been for his family and the royal family.

The Princess of Wales and her husband Prince William have relied on the support of Michael and Carole since her diagnosis, which was announced after King Charles revealed his own battle with the disease.

The ongoing health issues facing his daughter and the King come after joyful news last October, when Michael and Carole’s son James welcomed baby boy Inigo with wife Alizee Thevenet.

Michael was born in Leeds in 1949 and was raised by parents Captain Peter Middleton and Valerie Glassborow. It was a family with aristocratic antecedents.

Both served in the Second World War: Peter as a pilot in the Royal Air Force and Valerie as a codebreaker and volunteer nurse.

While serving in the RAF, Peter flew with Prince Philip as co-pilot on a two-month flying tour of South America in 1962.

Like his father and grandfather, Michael attended Clifton College, a boarding school in Bristol, before going on to study and graduate from the University of Surrey.

Michael originally planned to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a pilot.

He studied at the British European Airways flying school before deciding to join the ground crew.

Michael then started working for British Airways as a flight coordinator, where he met Carole, whose maiden name was Goldsmith.

The couple married on June 21, 1980 at the Church of St. James in Buckinghamshire.

Two years later, in 1982, they welcomed their first child, Catherine. Their second daughter, Philippa – or Pippa as she is now known to the world – followed in 1983.

Michael moved his family to Amman, Jordan for work from May 1984 to September 1986.

After returning to England in 1987, Michael and Carole welcomed baby James.

Until Catherine was 13, the family lived in a two-bedroom cottage in Bradfield, Berkshire. They later moved to nearby Bucklebury, where they remain today.

In 2012, the couple moved to their current home in Bucklebury, a Tudor-style mansion.

Carole founded her ill-fated Party Pieces company in 1987. By the 1990s, the company selling party supplies and decorations had expanded into mail order and was managed by both Carole and Michael.

However, the company later went bankrupt, owing £2.6 million to creditors.

Since becoming grandparents to Kate and William’s three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, Michael and Carole have played an even bigger role in the royals’ lives.

William refused to allow them to be treated as non-royal in-laws had been in the past, when they were often excluded from events.

The late Queen was delighted and warm to the Middletons’ hard-working, ambitious values.

Michael and Carole were invited to Balmoral and Sandringham, where they were guests on Christmas Day. And they also attended the king’s coronation.

William’s love for his in-laws was on full display last week when he warmly greeted both Carole and Michael at Royal Ascot.

The Prince of Wales helped Carole when her heel got stuck in the grass and was later pictured chatting to both her and his father-in-law.

The Ascot outing was Carole and Michael’s first public appearance since Kate’s cancer diagnosis.

In her 2022 book The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil, royal commentator Tina Brown described how William ‘adopted’ the Middleton family after just a year of dating Kate.

An acquaintance told Brown, “He wasn’t just into her, he was into them. A warm nest with a complete nuclear family and apparently wonderfully uncomplicated.

‘The father played the father, the mother the tiger mother of the province, but he also saw how the daughters and James got along with their parents – and wanted to get along. What a contrast.’

William, who had a choice of several palaces to spend his weekends in, enjoyed nothing more than “tennis, TV and the comfort of Carole in the Middleton manse,” Brown said.

The Prince’s love for the entire Middleton family was evident from his decision in 2011 to spend Christmas at their country home in Bucklebury, West Berkshire, rather than with the royal family.

William was such a regular at the Middletons’ home that he brought his quad bike there from Highgrove.

He also took the family on holiday, including to the island of Mustique, once a favorite of Princess Margaret.

Michael, meanwhile, became a kind of ‘surrogate father’, according to Brown.

An acquaintance said: ‘If your own father always organizes dinners for fifty people on Catherine the Great’s porcelain or whatever, it’s not very relaxing.

‘Whereas the Middletons were like a pipe and slippers, with the radio on, which is a bit of a William and Kate world.’

Carole and Michael have also built a very close bond with their royal grandchildren.

They were the first members of the family to visit Prince George when he was born in 2013 and have been a constant presence in his life since.

A month after the birth of the young royal, Michael volunteered to take the first photo of his new grandson so that William and Kate didn’t have to hire an outside photographer.

Following Kate’s cancer diagnosis earlier this year, it was Carole and Michael’s continued support that allowed William to continue fulfilling some royal duties – even while his father, the King, is also battling the disease.

In April, William was spotted at a pub in Norfolk with his mother-in-law. It was another sign of how close they are.

During the Easter holidays, Carole stayed with the Wales again,” said the Mail’s Richard Eden.

Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty Magazine, previously said: ‘Carole and Michael are as much family to William as they are to Catherine.

‘He loves having Carole around to help as she has been with the children from the start and it is easy and reassuring to have her invaluable help.

‘Both with the children and with keeping Catherine well. She’s a strong woman!’