The late Queen Elizabeth II’s last recorded words have been revealed by former Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Ms Truss, 48, visited Britain’s longest-serving monarch at her beloved Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, just two days before her death in September 2022.
In her new memoir, which was serialised in the Mail, Britain’s shortest serving prime minister revealed how she was advised by the Queen to ‘pace’ herself.
Ms Truss – the last of the 15 prime ministers to serve the Queen – has now told The Sun the final six words that the monarch told her when their meeting came to an end on September 6, 2022.
The Queen said: ‘I’ll see you again next week.’ Ms Truss recalled: ‘I absolutely thought that would happen.’
But on September 8, just two days after the pair were pictured shaking hands, the world was plunged into mourning as Queen Elizabeth’s death was announced by Buckingham Palace.
Ms Truss visited Britain’s longest-serving monarch at her beloved Balmoral Castle in Scotland just two days before her death in September 2022
Liz Truss (pictured) was the last of the 15 prime ministers who served the late Queen Elizabeth II
The official cause of death would later be recorded as ‘old age’.
Ms Truss – who had flown to Scotland after defeating Rishi Sunak in the Tory leadership contest in summer 2022 – survived just 49 days in her role.
Her brief tenure was marred by economic turmoil – including reforms that sent the pound tumbling – before her ousting from No 10.
Speaking about the final meeting with the Queen on The Sun’s Never Mind the Ballots show, Ms Truss said: ‘She was an extremely wise woman and so, so on the ball.’
The Mail has previously revealed that Ms Truss writes of the late Queen in the book, Ten Years To Save The West: ‘She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty.
‘Towards the end of our discussion, she warned me that being prime minister is incredibly aging. She also gave me two words of advice: “Pace yourself.” Maybe I should have listened.’
Summoned to Scotland due to the Queen’s poor health, Ms Truss described her as ‘frail’ but ‘alert’, ‘absolutely on top’ of things and seemed intent on meeting again.
At the time, the Queen was using a walking stick because she had been suffering from episodic mobility problems.
Upon news of the Queen’s death – which came just days after Ms Truss entered No 10 – the former prime minister recalls thinking: ‘Why me? Why now?’
The state ceremony and protocol that followed left her ‘a long way from my natural comfort zone’, she writes. Ms Truss said she broke down ‘into floods of tears on the sofa’. She added: ‘Once again the grief was mixed with a feeling of awe over the sheer weight of the event, and the fact that it was happening on my watch.’
‘Ten Years to Save the West’: Former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s new book
Ms Truss admitted previous prime ministers may have been better suited to the events by providing ‘the soaring rhetoric and performative statesmanship necessary’.
She said that, despite being under massive political pressure, her first meeting with King Charles sparked ‘a bizarre sense of camaraderie between us, with both starting out in our new roles and having to navigate unfamiliar territory’. At the time, Tory MPs had already begun making moves to relieve Ms Truss of her duties. As she curtseyed to Charles, he said: ‘So you’ve come back again?’
Ms Truss replied: ‘It’s a great pleasure,’ but the King added: ‘Dear, oh dear. Anyway…’
On the anniversary of the Queen’s death in September 2023, Ms Truss said the Queen was ‘mentally alert’ during their meeting.
In the meeting at Balmoral, she was absolutely on top of what was happening,’ she told GB News at the time.
‘She was very, very keen to reassure me that we’d be meeting again soon. It was very important to her.
‘I’d met the Queen before when I was Justice Secretary. I’ve met her on several occasions. And although she was physically quite frail, she was always absolutely mentally alert and determined to do her duty.’