Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the late Queen Elizabeth II had a form of bone cancer in her final years.
Johnson’s new memoir, Unleashed, will hit booksellers’ shelves in October. But an excerpt teased this week offered a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into the queen’s cause of death.
The former prime minister served as the country’s top political leader for three years before stepping down just two days before the queen’s death in September 2022. Johnson’s memoir says the country’s monarch of 70 years knew she had bone cancer for “a year or more” before her death.
The queen’s cause of death is listed as “old age” on her death certificate. Johnson’s revelation is particularly intriguing as senior British officials and members of the royal family are notoriously reticent to hand out personal information.
During Johnson’s final encounter with the 96-year-old queen, she appeared “pale and more stooped” with “dark bruising on her hands and wrists, probably from drips or injections,” according to his memoir. However, she was determined “to hang on and do her last duty” of meeting Johnson’s successor, former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss.
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And she did, leaning on a cane to fulfill her constitutional role as head of state to meet with each incoming prime minister by inviting them to form a government in her name.
“She was absolutely on top of what was happening and very, very, keen to reassure me we would be meeting again soon,” Truss said later as she reflected on her first and last meeting with the queen at Balmoral Castle.
