Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest-reigning monarch, passed away on September 8, 2022.
Two days before she died, royal photographer Jane Barlow captured the Queen's meeting with the new Prime Minister Liz Truss at the Balmoral Castle in Scotland, which is now the last ever public photograph of the late monarch.
The PA and former Derby Telegraph photographer expressed that photographing the Queen was "an honour and a privilege".
According to her, the Queen “seemed very happy” on the day of the shoot.
“When I came into the room with the Queen’s press secretary, she was very smiley. There was a wee while where we had to wait for Liz Truss to be announced. So, during that short time she commented on the weather and how dark it seemed outside because the weather had closed in," Jane Barlow told the Daily Mail
“Obviously she was very frail, but she was very smiley... I got lots of smiles from her.”
Barlow photographed the Queen shaking Truss’s hand where she had a big smile on.
“At that point, I moved out of the room and that was just my very brief few minutes with Her Majesty on Tuesday,” says Barlow.
The photojournalist reminisces about her short time with the late monarch and says that it was a “lovely moment, just as we were waiting for those few minutes.”
“It wasn’t posed at all, it was just a nice natural moment where she looked up and smiled. And also, now all the more poignant because it is one of the last pictures that was taken of her," she adds.
