Elizabeth II’s final diary entry revealed
Elizabeth II was still keeping a private diary until two days before her death, with a “factual and practical” final entry, a biographer has found.
The late Queen, who died on Sept 8 2022 at the age of 96, recorded that “Edward came to see me”, in reference to Sir Edward Young, her private secretary, and made notes about the swearing-in of new Privy Council members.
She made the entry at Balmoral, where she held a final audience with Liz Truss, who was then prime minister, before she “slipped away” in her sleep two days later, said Robert Hardman, the royal biographer.
Hardman, who discovered the diary while researching updated chapters for his book about the King, said that the monarch was now following in his mother’s footsteps by keeping a factual diary.
The late Queen’s journal was famously a record of her activities, rather than laying out her thoughts and feelings. It was intended to jog her memory and keep a note of her working life for the archives.
She once told Kenneth Rose, the society diarist: “I have no time to record conversations, only events.”
“It transpires that she was still writing it at Balmoral two days before her death,” Hardman wrote in his new book. “Her last entry was as factual and practical as ever.
“It could have been describing another normal working day starting in the usual way – ‘Edward came to see me’ – as she noted the arrangements which her private secretary, Sir Edward Young, had made for the swearing-in of the new ministers of the Truss administration.”
Since becoming monarch, the book states, the King has followed his mother’s policy of not giving interviews and of keeping a practical diary.
“He doesn’t write great narrative diaries like he used to,” a senior courtier discloses, but “scribbles down his recollections and reflections” on the events of the day.
The new style, Hardman said, is “not quite as self-analytical, humorous and readable as the journal he kept as a prince”.
Some of those entries have already been read by the public, with an extract of his frank thoughts on the handover of Hong Kong leaked to a newspaper in 2006.
King’s cancer diagnosis
The new edition of the book also relays how Buckingham Palace reacted to the King’s cancer diagnosis earlier this year, suggesting aides were not so alarmed by the prognosis that they moved to update funeral plans.
“Eyes are firmly on the present,” Hardman writes. “Though all royal funeral arrangements have always been routinely reviewed (by military and government planners) as a matter of course, it is both significant and reassuring to learn that there was no call to the master of such ceremonies, the Earl Marshal, at any stage during the dark days of early 2024.
“The King’s own valedictory arrangements have now, officially, been upgraded to Operation London Bridge, mirroring those of Elizabeth II.”
The new Prince of Wales has taken on the code name “Menai Bridge” from his father, replacing his previous Operation Clare Bridge, after the crossing over the River Cam, during his time as Duke of Cambridge.
On the future of the King’s beloved home of Highgrove, where he spent much of his time recuperating from cancer, one “close ally” of the King suggested it would make an ideal “Museum of King Charles III” in years to come.
The updated edition of Charles III by Robert Hardman is published by Macmillan and out now.
