Queen Elizabeth II had bone cancer, Boris Johnson writes in new book titled Unleashed
Former UK PM Boris Johnson has revealed more details about what he knew of the Queen’s health before she died and what they said in their final meeting.
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Queen Elizabeth had a form of bone cancer, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declared in a new memoir, claiming he knew for “a year or more” before her death.
Mr Johnson described his final encounter with the Queen, when he visited her at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on September 6, 2022, two days before she died age 96.
“Her doctors were worried that at any time she could enter a sharp decline,” he wrote in the book Unleashed, which will hit Australian shelves on October 10.
“I tried a few jolly remarks with the courtiers, about the kind of advice I might give to Her Majesty, about who she might really send for to be PM; that kind of thing. They smiled. But they looked tired. Edward Young, her private secretary, tried to prepare me,” he wrote in a selection of excerpts published in the Daily Mail.
“She’s gone down quite a bit over the summer,’ he said. And then the footman knocked and showed me into Her Majesty’s drawing room. ‘Good morning, Prime Minister,’ she said, and as we sat down opposite one another on the greeny-blue sofas I could see at once what Edward meant. She seemed pale and more stooped, and she had dark bruising on her hands and wrists, probably from drips or injections,” Mr Johnson wrote.
“But her mind – as Edward had also said – was completely unimpaired by her illness.”
Buckingham Palace said doctors were “concerned” for the monarch’s health on September 8, 2022, and announced her death just a few hours later.
A few weeks later, however, when her death certificate was released to the public, the cause of death was listed simply as “old age”.
Mr Johnson and his wife Carrie were among the 2000 guests at the state funeral, held at Westminster Abbey in London on September 19.
As Prime Minister, Mr Johnson was granted audiences with the late Queen every week, which he described like being taken out to tea by a much-loved grandmother.
“I felt there was nothing I could not tell her, and her genius – as I gave her my descriptions of government infighting or foreign chicanery – was to sound both understanding and sympathetic, and then, at just the right moment, to give the tiniest nudge of advice.”
Mr Johnson said she spoke with the historical knowledge of someone who had actually served in uniform during WWII, who knew the kingdom was “infinitely capable” of rebounding.
“She radiated such an ethic of service, patience and leadership that you really felt you would, if necessary, die for her,” he wrote.
“You need someone kind and wise, and above politics, to personify what is good about our country. She did that job brilliantly.”
The pair steered Great Britain and Northern Ireland through the Covid crisis and also navigated much of the complex process of detangling the UK from Europe after Brexit.
Mr Johnson is not the first person to claim the Queen had cancer.
Royal biographer Gyles Brandreth addressed rumours that she had myeloma, a rare form of bone cancer, in his 2023 book ‘Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait’, noting at the time that would explain her tiredness, weight loss and mobility issues during her final years.
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