For 70 years, every single night, without exception, Queen Elizabeth II sat down at a desk, picked up her fountain pen and wrote in her diary. It did not matter how late the hour was. It did not matter how exhausting the day had been. The diary was, as one former member of the royal household described it, an unmissable duty.
A record of events rather than emotions, because that, in almost every way, was who she was. Royal biographer Robert Hardman has now revealed what she wrote in that diary two days before she passed away at Balmoral in September 2022. It was five words. And they were completely, perfectly her.
For 70 years, the Queen sat down at her desk every day to write in a diary
The royal biographer has finally revealed the last entry she made, just 2 days before her passing
On September 6th, 2022, Queen Elizabeth sat down at Balmoral, the Scottish estate she loved above almost anywhere else, and wrote what would turn out to be her last ever diary entry. That same day, she had received newly elected Prime Minister Liz Truss, appointing her in what would prove to be her final public engagement after a lifetime of service.
Her private secretary, Sir Edward Young, had come to see her to help arrange the swearing-in of Truss's ministers. And that evening, as she had done every evening for seven decades, she recorded it. "Edward came to see me." Five words. Factual, precise and entirely devoid of drama, exactly as she had always written.
The entry was precise and down to business, just like people remember her to be
"Her last entry was as factual and practical as ever," Hardman wrote in the updated edition of his book “Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story.” She passed away two days later, on September 8th, 2022, at the age of 96. Doctors initially told her she wouldn’t make it past Christmas 2021, but she still defied the odds.
The Queen's diary was never meant to be a window into her inner life. She made that clear herself. "I have no time to record conversations, only events," she once told society diarist Kenneth Rose, a line that tells you almost everything you need to know about both the diary and the woman who kept it.
She still used a classic fountain pen and wrote in a leatherbound book
Each entry was written with a fountain pen using black ink. Each diary was leatherbound, marked with her royal cipher and numbered with a Roman numeral. They were, in every sense, the diaries of a monarch rather than a person. Meticulous, ordered, and designed to serve as an archive for historians and not a confessional for posterity.
Writing in the diary was always the last act of the day, every day, no matter what. A former member of the royal household told The Sun in 2019 that she wrote at a desk, never in bed, and that it was a routine she never broke regardless of how weary she was.
Her successor, King Charles, continues the tradition, but his notes are more personal than the Queen's
King Charles also keeps a journal, though the approach is much less formal than his mother's. Where the Queen's diaries were structured, numbered and written with precision, Charles takes a different approach entirely. "He doesn't write great narrative diaries like he used to," a senior courtier told Hardman.
Instead, he "scribbles down his recollections and reflections" at the end of each day, a looser, more personal practice that reflects a markedly different relationship with the written word. The discipline is the same, but each monarch makes it their own.
There is something extraordinary about the fact that, two days before she passed away at 96, after a lifetime of public duty spanning seven decades and fifteen prime ministers, Queen Elizabeth sat down and wrote five words about a meeting with her private secretary.
Not a reflection on her life or a lengthy farewell. Just the facts of the day, recorded as they always had been, because that was what you did and she was not about to stop now. It is, in its own understated way, one of the most remarkable things about her. The diary did not change at the end. She just kept calm and carried on.
Would you like to read the Queen's daily diary? Tell us in the comments which day you would most like to read about!
Here are the videos of the Queen's first and last public balcony appearances:
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