The John King Brain Tumour Foundation holds its gala ball at The Dorchester on Friday 30 October 2026, in one of the kitchens the chef it is named for spent his career in.
John King spent more than forty years as a chef, in kitchens that included The Dorchester, The Connaught and The Ritz Club, and took gold with the last of them at the 1988 Culinary Olympics. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts and lectured part-time at Westminster College, where he had trained, teaching chefs who stayed in touch with him for the rest of his life. He was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2015 and died on 22 November 2016.
His wife Laura registered the foundation on 18 March 2017, after the two of them had spent his treatment restoring the neurological patients’ roof garden at St George’s Hospital. It works with one hospital rather than many, the Atkinson Morley Wing at St George’s, and buys what the neurosurgery team asks for. The first project was £150,000 for a neurological microscope, a robotic guidance platform followed, The Queen opened the new intensive-care garden in June 2026, and the total raised is above £1.3 million.
The 2026 gala ball is at The Dorchester on Friday 30 October, with dinner, entertainment and an auction. Tables and individual tickets are taken directly by the foundation, which last held the ball at the same hotel in November 2024. The choice of room is not incidental: The Dorchester is one of the kitchens John King worked in.