Charles turns 70: the Prince of Wales through the years

A three-year-old Prince Charles with his parents, the Queen and Prince Philip, and his younger sister Anne, in a candid family photo taken in 1951

Prince Charles walking along Downing Street, Cambridge, in 1967, as a first-year student in anthropology, archaeology and history at Trinity College

The Royal talks to a comrade in 1975, while serving as a pilot in 845 Naval Air Squadron

A youthful Charles throws some shapes while getting a lesson in soul dancing from 16-year-old Pearl Willie, a pupil at St George’s Secondary School in Maida Vale, London, in 1978

The Prince at his wedding to Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in July 1981. The union produced their two sons, William and Harry, but it was not to be a happy one - the pair divorced in 1996. Diana died the following year in a car crash in Paris

Hitting the slopes alongside his sons, Princes William and Harry, on a skiing holiday in Whistler, Canada, in March 1998

The Prince and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, leave Windsor Castle after a blessing service that followed their civil marriage at the Windsor Guildhall on 9 April 2005