Boris Johnson claims Queen Elizabeth II had 'form of bone cancer' when she died

Boris Johnson has claimed Queen Elizabeth II had "form of bone cancer" when she died.

The former Prime Minister talked about his final meeting with the monarch, in his new memoir, Unleashed.

"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 wrote. "She seemed pale and more stooped, and she had dark ­bruising on her hands and wrists, probably from drips or injections."

The 60-year-old claimed that just before their last meeting, the Queen's private secretary Edward Young, warned him that her health had "gone down quite a bit over the summer," but added that when they met, "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."

Johnson claimed that the Queen "had known all ­summer that she was going, but was determined to hang on and do her last duty" - which was overseeing the "peaceful and orderly transition" of power from Johnson to the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss.

The Queen died aged 96, two days after her final meeting with Johnson, in September 2022. Her death certificate cited "old age" as the cause of her death, and the Royal family have never given a different reason for her death.