Boris Johnson was given a heartbreaking nine-word warning before meeting the late Queen Elizabeth in Balmoral, just two days before her death.
The former premier revealed intimate details about his last meeting with the late monarch on September 6, 2022, on the day he tendered his resignation as Prime Minister, in his new memoir, Unleashed, to be published on October 10.
In his book, Mr Johnson wrote: “When Carrie and I got to Balmoral, we were shown into a library with a fire going. We stood around for quite a while and had coffee. I noticed something in the mood of her courtiers.
“I tried a few jolly remarks, 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.”
It was then that the former PM revealed: “Edward Young, her private secretary, tried to prepare me. 'She's gone down quite a bit over the summer.'
“'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.
“But her mind – as Edward had also said – was completely unimpaired by her illness, and from time to time in our conversation she still flashed that great white smile in her sudden mood-lifting beauty.”
Elsewhere, Mr Johnson claimed that the late Queen suffered from bone cancer, something Gyles Brandreth had revealed before.
At the time of her death, aged 96, and afterwards, speculation about the cause of it swirled but the death certificate recorded that she passed away of “old age”.
Mr Johnson wrote the book: “I had known for a year or more that she had a form of bone cancer, and her doctors were worried that at any time she could enter a sharp decline,” the excerpt says.