Queen Elizabeth Had Bone Cancer Before Her Death, Boris Johnson Claims

Johnson's new memoir brings an old rumor to the forefront.

By Michael Hein

Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson just dropped a bombshell revelation about Queen Elizabeth II. The 60-year-old politician has a new memoir coming out on Oct. 10 titled Unleashed, and in an excerpt published by The Dail Mail, he claims that the queen was suffering from cancer before her death. Buckingham Palace has declined to comment on the story.

In his book, Johnson described his final meeting with the queen, which took place two days before her death in September of 2022. Johnson met with her at Balmoral Castle for his final audience as outgoing prime minister. He wrote: "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." He added that the queen's private secretary, Sir Edward Young, told him: "She's gone down quite a bit over the summer."

Queen Elizabeth's official death certificate says that she died from "old age." The idea that the queen suffered from such a serious disease in secret has many commenters online in shock.

Last year, royal biographer Gyles Brandreth was the first to write about the queen suffering from cancer, but he only covered the idea as an unconfirmed rumor. He heard that that the queen had been diagnosed with a rare form of myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. In his book Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, he wrote that it "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."

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This more prominent claim about the queen's health may be received differently coming from Johnson, who remains one of the most controversial political figures in the U.K. Johnson was the Leader of the Conservative Party, and was one of the biggest proponents of the "Brexit campaign" starting in 2016. He became Prime Minister in July of 2019 and was widely criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and a few intragovernmental scandals. In July of 2022, Johnson faced a mass resignation of government workers in protest of his actions, and he chose to resign as prime minister.

Queen Elizabeth II was 96 years old at the time of her passing. The royal family has not commented on reports of her secret illness. Johnson's memoir Unleashed will be available on Oct. 10 in the U.K. and Oct. 22 in the U.S.

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