Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims Queen Elizabeth II was diagnosed with bone cancer in her final years.
Johnson, 60, reflected on his relationship with the late royal in his upcoming memoir, “Unleashed,” detailing his final meeting with the Queen at Balmoral Castle in September 2022 — just days before she died.
“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 wrote in an excerpt obtained by the Daily Mail.
Before their meeting, Johnson claimed the Queen’s private secretary, Edward Young, warned him that her health had “gone down quite a bit over the summer.”
“She seemed pale and more stooped, and she had dark bruising on her hands and wrists, probably from drips or injections,” Johnson wrote.
He continued, “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 its sudden mood-lifting beauty.”
The monarch died two days after their meeting at the age of 96.
According to Johnson, the Queen “had known all summer that she was going, but was determined to hang on and do her last duty” by overseeing the “peaceful and orderly transition” of power from him to his successor Liz Truss.
Johnson, the former leader of the Conservative Party, formally resigned from his position during their meeting.
He was the 14th prime minister of Queen Elizabeth’s historic 70-year reign.
The former Mayor of London also shared the “crucial” — and final — piece of advice she offered him.
“‘There’s no point in bitterness,’ she said, and amen to that. If everyone in politics – and life – could see that as clearly as she did, the world would be a much, much happier place.”
Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
Johnson isn’t the first person to have claimed the late monarch was diagnosed with cancer during her final years.
Royal author Gyles Brandreth wrote about rumors Her Majesty had a rare form of myeloma, a bone marrow cancer, in his December 2022 book, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait.”
He explained that the diagnosis “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.”
However, the Queen’s offical cause of death was listed as “old age” and the palace has never disclosed any other medical records.
Following the monarch’s death, her eldest son, King Charles III, 75, ascended the throne.
The King has since been diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer — for which he underwent chemotherapy.
“Unleashed” is out in the U.K. on Oct. 10 and released stateside on Oct. 22.
