Royal visit.

Though Pakistan has not just been independent of the UK for 72 years, and has even been a republic for 63, it is still hospitable for British Royals. There is a certain appropriateness in the impending visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as it is the first visit to Pakistan by a member of the Royal Family, the last being in October 1997, when the Duke's grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, visited Pakistan, just a few months after the visit by her estranged daughter-in-law (and the Duke's late mother), the Princess of Wales visited to inaugurate the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital.

The Duke and Duchess will be in Pakistan from October 14 to 18. While Queen Elizabeth's visit had come 36 years after her previous visit in 1961, Princess Diana's had been her third, previous visits having come in 1991 and 1996. It was as a precursor to their visit that the Duke and Duchess had been hosted by Prince Karim Agha Khan at the Agha Khan Centre in London on Wednesday, a fortnight ahead of their visit. They not only were given a sample of Pakistani cuisine, but also got the opportunity of meeting a wide cross-section of people from the Pakistani diaspora, which is both numerous and of long standing.

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