Liz Truss has revealed the late Queen Elizabeth II told her to “pace yourself” during their first and final meeting as prime minister.
In her new book, Ten Years to Save the West, Truss admitted she did not take the monarch’s advice when they met in September 2022 to confirm her as Britain’s new prime minister.
Of her historic meeting at Balmoral in Scotland, which occured just two days before the monarch’s death, Truss says the 96-year-old the Queen “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had last been in the public eye.
“We spent around 20 minutes discussing politics. She was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty,” she writes.
“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.”
At the meeting, the Queen was pictured using a walking stick and smiling warmly as she greeted Ms Truss in front of an open fire in her sitting room.
The meeting produced the last public photograph of the late Queen before she died on September 8 2022 at her Scottish residence.
Ms Truss’ book dives into the visit among other tales from her short tenure as prime minister which lasted just 49 days.
She travelled to Balmoral Castle to meet Elizabeth II on September 6 and described the monarch as “frail” but “mentally alert” prior to the book’s release.
Ms Truss said that she had been summoned to the Scottish palace due to the Queen’s health. However, she found her namesake was “absolutely on top” of things and seemed intent on meeting again.
“She was very, very keen to reassure me that we’d be meeting again soon… It was very important to her,” Ms Truss told GB News in September 2023.
“She was absolutely on top of what was happening. Although she was physically quite frail, she was absolutely mentally alert.”
Ms Truss added that there was no suggestion the Queen might be about to pass away. Truss writes in her new book that the news came as “a profound shock” to her which left her thinking “Why me? Why now?”
“I was obviously only in the first few days of the job of being prime minister. I was thinking about many different things,” Ms Truss told GB in 2023.
“But the assumption absolutely was that this would be the first of many meetings [with the Queen].
“She was very determined to do her duty, right to the end. We had a very, very good meeting. She was upbeat.”
While promoting her book to the Mail on Sunday last September, Ms Truss revealed that her formerly close political friendship with Kwasi Kwarteng – who she sacked as chancellor – is effectively over.
And she admitted she “still struggles to compute what happened” during her turbulent time in Downing Street.
“I was pushing against a system and against an orthodoxy that was gradually moving to the left,” she said, singling out the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility as she recalled the “seismic” period in politics.
