Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has shared details of his final private audience with the Queen just days before her death, saying she was still "bright and focuses".
The outgoing PM, who was the Monarch's 14th leader, travelled to Balmoral to offer her his resignation following the Tory leadership winner being announced on Monday. He was joined by his wife, Carrie.
Recalling the meeting during an interview with the BBC, he said: "One of the reasons it was so shocking on the eighth to hear about her death was because in that audience she had been absolutely on it. Just two days before her death.
"She was actively focused on geopolitics, on UK politics, quoting statesmen from the 50s, it was quite extraordinary.
"She seemed very bright, very focused. Look, she was clearly not well, I think that was the thing I found so moving when we all heard about her death two days later.
"I just thought how incredible that her sense of duty had kept her going in the way that it had, given how ill she obviously was, how amazing that she should be so bright and so focussed. So it was a pretty emotional time."
The Queen's final public duty was officially making Liz Truss the country new Prime Minister. The Tory travelled to Balmoral shortly after Johnson for her first audience in her new role.
The Prime Minister has weekly meetings with the Monarch to get updates on what is going on in Parliament.
Details of the private audiences are meant to be kept secret, but Johnson was scolding by staff after his first visit for sharing one of her most blunt comments.
He told staff she said: "I don’t know why anyone would want the job".
EuroNews journalist Vincent McAviney, who was on the tour during which he made the comment, says the then-PM's staff quickly then told him "not to repeat those things so loudly".
In the days following the Queen's death, several former Prime Ministers have reminisced over their weekly meetings with her.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Theresa May said: "Queen Elizabeth II was quite simply the most remarkable person I have ever met.
"Across the nations of the world, for so many people, meeting Queen Elizabeth simply made their day and for many will be the memory of their life. Of course, for those of us who had the honour to serve as one of her prime ministers, those meetings were more frequent with the weekly audiences.
"These were not meetings with a high and mighty monarch, but a conversation with a woman of experience and knowledge and immense wisdom. They were also the one meeting I went to, which I knew it would not be briefed out to the media. What made those audiences so special was the understanding the Queen had of issues which came from the work she put into her red boxes, combined with her years of experience."
Gordon Brown admitted he could be left “embarrassed” during meetings with the Queen, revealing the former monarch was often better informed about current affairs than he was.
He recalled how the Queen questioned “why have these bankers got it all wrong” in 2008, when the financial crash led to the UK entering recession.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme, the former Labour leader said: “She would listen, she would ask questions. She would be endlessly knowledgeable about everything happening in the Commonwealth.
“I was very embarrassed one day because I went in to see her at six o’clock, I didn’t know that one of the Commonwealth leaders had been ousted and a new government had been formed.
“She was telling me what was happening when I was supposed to report to her.”
