Queen Elizabeth II of England was dying of bone cancer, a disease she kept secret, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims in his memoirs, from which the British media publish excerpts.
Elizabeth II was 96 years old and the longest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom when she died on September 8, 2022, at Balmoral, her castle in Scotland.
“Natural causes”, according to official death certificate
According to her official death certificate, Elizabeth II died of “natural causes,” but Johnson wrote in her soon-to-be-published memoir “Unleashed” that the monarch had bone cancer and was aware that her time was coming. determine.
In an extract from his memoirs, published in media such as The Mail on Sunday, he described the last time he saw her alive when she formally resigned, two days before her death.
“Edward Young, his private secretary, tried to prepare me,” Johnson wrote. “He had known for a year or more that he had bone cancer, and his doctors were worried that at any moment he could go into a sharp decline,” says the former prime minister, according to excerpts also published by the magazine. Newsweek.”
“It’s gotten pretty bad over the summer,” he said. And then the secretary knocked on the door and showed me into His Majesty’s living room,” the politician continues in his story.
“’Good morning, Prime Minister,’ said the monarch, and as we sat opposite each other on the teal sofas, I could immediately understand what Edward meant.”
“She appeared pale and more hunched over, and had dark bruises on her hands and wrists, probably from drips or injections.”
“But his mind, as Edward had also said, was completely untouched by his illness and from time to time in our conversation he still showed that big white smile with its sudden beauty that lifted the spirits,” the British politician continued.
“Fulfill your last duty”
“As Edward Young later explained to me,” Johnson wrote, “she knew everything (about her illness) the summer she was going to die, but she was determined to endure and fulfill her last duty: to oversee the peaceful and orderly transition of one government to the next, and, he waited to add another outgoing prime minister to his record.”
The Conservative Party politician is not the first person to publicly declare that the queen had cancer. The royal historian Gyles Brandreth told it in a book, recalls Newsweek magazine.
The death of Elizabeth II occurred just two days after having held an audience at Balmoral with the then British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, which was preceded by another in which Boris Johnson informed her that he was resigning.
