Boris Johnson claims late Queen had bone cancer in tell all memoir

In his tell-all memoir, the disgraced Tory and former Prime Minister also appeared to break convention by revealing advice given to him by the monarch just two days before she died

Boris Johnson has claimed the late Queen was suffering from bone cancer in her final year.

In his tell-all memoir, the disgraced Tory also appeared to break convention by revealing advice given to him by the monarch just two days before she died. Johnson visited the Queen at Balmoral to formally resign as Prime Minister on September 6, 2022 – the same day the last photograph of the Queen was taken, as she invited Liz Truss to become the next PM.

Elizabeth II died aged 96 two days later, with her death certificate listing “old age” as the cause of death. But in his book Unleashed, which is being serialised by the Mail, Johnson said he had known “for a year or more” that she had bone cancer.

He recalled the late Queen being pale with bruising on her hands during the final meeting. But he said her mind was “unimpaired by her illness”. Johnson, who was given an advance of £510,000 for Unleashed, was turfed out of office by his own MPs after breaking lockdown rules in the Partygate scandal.

In his book, he adds: “She was surprised by the general lack of bitterness, given what had happened at Westminster, but she approved. 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.”

In a biography of the Queen published in 2022, author Gyles Brandreth said he had heard she had been suffering from bone marrow cancer. He wrote: “The most common symptom of myeloma is bone pain, especially in the pelvis and lower back, and multiple myeloma is a disease that often affects the elderly.”