Just two days before her passing, Boris Johnson recalled that the Queen was “totally on it” and “so brilliant and so concentrated” during their penultimate encounter.
Last Tuesday, the former prime minister visited with the Queen in Balmoral to officially announce his resignation.
They met just before Her Majesty and Liz Truss had a meeting to choose the next Tory leader as Mr. Johnson’s replacement.
The Queen’s meetings with Mr. Johnson and Ms. Truss last week turned out to be some of her last official engagements during her 70-year monarchy.
Less than 48 hours later, her death was reported.
Her Majesty’s death was “particularly startling,” according to Mr. Johnson, because of how “bright and concentrated” the 96-year-old had been during their meeting earlier in the week.
The Queen was “obviously not well,” the former PM did admit.
One of the reasons it was so startling to learn of her death on the 8th was that she had been completely on it during our final meeting, according to Mr. Johnson.
‘Only two days before she passed away. It was pretty astonishing how intensely interested she was in geopolitics and UK politics, citing politicians from the 1950s.
She had a brilliant, laser-like focus. Look at her; she was obviously ill.
“I believe it was the aspect of her death that I found to be so poignant when I learned of it, when we all learned of her passing on Thursday, two days later.
I was really struck by how amazing it was that her sense of responsibility had sustained her in that manner.
“How incredible that she could be so bright and so focused given how plainly unwell she was.” Consequently, it was a very emotional period.
When it was discovered that Covid lockdown-busting parties had been thrown at Downing Street on the eve of the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip’s funeral, Mr. Johnson was obliged to apologise to her.
However, the former PM stated that during his weekly meetings with the Queen, the subject “never came up.”
She never engaged in that kind of discourse because of her excellent understanding of constitutional function, he added.
She was completely concentrated on what she saw to be the most crucial concerns.
The setting of the meeting with Her Majesty is quite trustworthy. Thus, it was never a topic.
Mr. Johnson recalled their weekly conversations, in which they spoke about “just about everything under the sun.”
‘A lovely escape from everything else,’ he said, ‘and a wonderful time of tranquilly’ were the audiences.
Mr. Johnson praised the Queen for her message to the country during the first Covid shutdown in April 2020, calling it “extremely significant,” and claiming that pop singers “wouldn’t have the same effect as her broadcast.”