King Charles to visit France in September after riot disruption

The King will travel to France in September, after a scheduled visit in March was cancelled due to protests against pension reforms.

The original three-day trip would have been the King's first overseas state visit since succeeding his late mother, Elizabeth II, as sovereign.

But social unrest prompted by French President Emmanuel Macron's new pension law meant the visit was postponed.

The Élysée Palace said the King's visit was an "honour".

"It will bear witness to the depth of the historical ties that unite our two countries and our two peoples, and will contribute to honouring French excellence and know-how," a statement said.

The King and his wife, Queen Camilla, had been scheduled to tour Paris and Bordeaux, the first leg of a trip that would also take in Germany.

The visit in March had been planned to take place shortly after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's participation in a Paris summit.

However, Mr Macron's use of executive power to push through his proposed legislation to raise the age of retirement without a vote caused uproar in France with people taking to the streets across the country.

The largest protests took place in Paris, with police deploying tear gas against tens of thousands of people who occupied the Place de la Concorde. Clashes also took place in other major cities such as Marseille, Nantes, Amiens and Dijon.

The unrest meant the trip was postponed, with the King and Queen flying straight to Germany instead, where the King made history by becoming the first UK monarch to address the German Bundestag while in session.

The royal couple also visited a Hamburg church destroyed in the Second World War, and the Kindertransport Memorial, a sculpture which commemorates the 1938 rescue and evacuation of about 10,000 Jewish children to Britain.

The rescheduled visit to France takes place between 20 and 22 September.