Boris Johnson knew QEII had ‘a form of bone cancer’ for a year before her death

In 2022, less than three months after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, a “royal family friend” named Gyles Brandreth wrote and published Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait. He was the first one to put a name to QEII’s suffering in the final year of her life. Brandreth reported that QEII had “a form of myeloma — bone marrow cancer — which would explain her tiredness and weight loss and those ‘mobility issues’ we were often told about during the last year or so of her life.” As a reminder, no one at the palace and no one around QEII would disclose anything to do with QEII’s health in the final year. People were given vague explanations like “mobility issues” and “it hurts her to stand.” They made QEII stand to meet Liz Truss and QEII was dead within a few days. It was awful. Well, anyway, Boris Johnson apparently confirms the diagnosis in his memoir.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims that Queen Elizabeth had “a form of bone cancer” in the last years of her life.

Johnson, 60, makes the claim in his upcoming memoir Unleashed, which will be published in the U.K. on Oct. 10 and released in the U.S. on Oct. 22. In an excerpt serialized in the Daily Mail on Sept. 28, Johnson reflected on his final meeting with the Queen at Balmoral Castle in September 2022, two days before she died at age 96.

“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,” Johnson writes in Unleashed.

The former mayor of London adds that the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Edward Young, said, “‘She’s gone down quite a bit over the summer,’ ” before Johnson entered his outgoing audience as prime minister with her.

This marks the first time a senior British politician has spoken about her possible cause of death, which was officially listed as “old age” on her death certificate. The revelation is highly unusual in British public life. The queen’s health was a closely-guarded secret during her reign, and information about meetings between the prime minister and monarch are usually kept confidential.

Recalling his final meeting with Queen Elizabeth, Johnson said she “seemed pale and more stooped, and she had dark ­bruising on her hands and wrists, probably from drips or injections.” But, he said, the monarch’s mood was “completely ­unimpaired by her illness, and from time to time in our ­conversation she still flashed that great white smile in its sudden mood-lifting beauty.”

He said the late queen knew “all ­summer that she was going, but was determined to hang on and do her last duty” by seeing the transfer of power from Johnson to his successor Liz Truss.

[From Politico & People]

“I had known for a year or more that she had a form of bone cancer.” This confirms, to me, the timeline which I put together. Prince Philip died in April 2021. QEII was in remarkably good form after his death, attending horse shows and socializing. Then something fell apart in October 2021 – QEII suddenly wasn’t well enough to travel, she had to cancel some events at the last minute, and she went to the hospital overnight and the palace covered it up. I don’t think she was diagnosed with cancer until months after Philip passed. I also think that secretive hospitalization in the fall of 2021 was much more serious than they let on. I suspect QEII and the courtiers just wanted her to get through the Jubbly in June 2022, and she rallied for that before she let go.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar, Buckingham Palace.