QUEEN Elizabeth’s incredible stoicism during her final months will be revealed in a royal biography.
Her late Majesty is said to have told a lady-in-waiting that she was determined to keep busy as it helped her cope with Prince Philip’s death.
The Queen pictured ahead of her final audience as monarch before she passed away
Her late Majesty, pictured in May, is said to have been determined to stay busy
And she is said to have not wanted to give way to self-pity, saying: “My husband would certainly not have approved.”
But she pushed herself so hard that by last autumn she suffered a sudden low energy and was advised by doctors to rest, Gyles Brandreth revealed in Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait.
Her spirits were also kept up by television including BBC drama Line of Duty, although she sometimes struggled to keep up with the plot.
And one of her last conversations two days before she passed away was chatting with Clive Cox, one of her favourite racehorse trainers.
She called him at 10am to talk about the prospects for her two-year-old, Love Affairs, who was running at Goodwood.
Mr Cox said: “We talked about the filly, how the race might pan out, how another horse of hers was doing in my stable, and about a couple of other things. She was sharp as a tack.”
She is also said to have revelled in filming the Platinum Jubilee sketch with Paddington Bear, describing it as “great fun”.
And she was delighted that it was kept a secret by everyone until it was shown at the concert, saying: “That was lovely.”
The biography also reveals that the Queen and Prince Philip, who were married for 73 years, went weeks without seeing each other when the then-Duke of Edinburgh retired in 2017, the Daily Mail reports.
They regularly spoke over the phone and the Queen understood his desire “not to be fussed over” and to “see out his days in his own way”, Mr Brandreth writes.
But she barely left his side in the last few weeks of his life before he died in April last year.
And despite her grief, she saw it as her “Christian duty” to carry on and said: “Life goes on. It has to.”
It is also said that she had no hesitation in stripping “favourite child” Prince Andrew of his role following his car crash interview about Jeffrey Epstein in 2019.
A senior courtier revealed: “The Queen took a firm grip of things.
“To use the military jargon, there were only few days between flash and bang. Action was called for it and she took it.”
But she deliberately let photographers snap her riding with the Duke of York the day after to show her personal support.
She is also said to have carefully listened to Prince Andrew’s own account of his friendship with the paedophile financier, and just gave the one-word response: “Intriguing.”
Meanwhile, it was confirmed that she came up with the idea to keep Daniel Craig waiting in her James Bond sketch at the 2012 Olympic Games.
But she only felt comfortable doing stunts like that after The Queen Mother died in 2002, as it was felt she would have deemed them “a bit undignified”.
