Two years after Queen Elizabeth died at the age of 96, we are still getting more insight into what the last days of her life may have been like. In a new book about the royal family, author Robert Hardman revealed the Queen’s final diary entry, written less than two days before her death on September 8, 2022. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t at all what some people might have expected her to write.
More from CafeMom: Meghan Markle Is Worried Prince Harry Will Get ‘Sucked Back’ Into Royal Life
Queen Elizabeth spent her final days at Balmoral.
In the updated version of Robert’s book, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, which was released earlier this month, he wrote that Elizabeth remained diligent in maintaining her routine of writing what happened each day in her diary. But in her final entry, on September 6, she kept the contents brief.
Elizabeth's final entry contained only five words.
As People reported, she simply wrote, “Edward came to see me.”
But she wasn’t referencing her son, Edward. Instead, she was writing about her private secretary, Sir Edward Young, who had been helping her prepare for Liz Truss to take over as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. That same day, Elizabeth met with Liz in what would end up being her final royal engagement.
Elizabeth kept a diary for most of her life.
Elizabeth wrote in her diary by hand for 15 minutes per day, according to The Daily Mail, though her diaries are thought to be more “perfunctory” than anything else.
“I keep a diary, but not like Queen Victoria’s. It’s quite small,” Elizabeth once said in a documentary.
More from CafeMom: Prince William Says Kate Middleton Will Be Appearing ‘A Bit More’ in Public in 2025
There have been reports that the Queen also kept a 'secret' diary.
According to what an insider told The Sun in 2019, the Queen also had a much more private diary where she revealed her true thoughts and feelings — and no one was ever allowed to read it.
“The diary is taken with her wherever she is staying, whether it be Windsor or Sandringham or Balmoral, and is kept in a black leather case — a smaller version of one of the red despatch boxes containing government papers,” the palace insider said. “But, there are only two keys — the spare one is kept strictly as an emergency back-up by her private secretary.”
It sounds like writing in her diary was the last thing she did each day before going to sleep.
“We were talking about diaries after I had mentioned that I kept a nightly journal of where I’d been and the people I encountered, she said she did too, the difference being that while mine may have been for publication hers were definitely not,” actor Michael Palin once said, via The Sun, after spending an evening at Windsor Castle with the monarch.
“She commented that she found it quite difficult because it always made her a bit woozy and said, ‘I usually manage to write for about 15 minutes before my head goes bump’, and then she did an imitation of her head hitting the table, as if she had fallen asleep,” he added.
