DUTIFUL TO THE END

On Tuesday she met the new prime minister. On Thursday she was gone. We trace the shocking timeline of the queen’s demise

- NICI DE WET

THE impish smile, the twinkle in her eye, the ever-present handbag – as present as they’ve always been over the many years she’s appeared in public. Yet at her last official public engagement, she was clearly more frail and fragile, a walking stick and a bruised hand signs of the health issues that had plagued her in the past year.

Queen Elizabeth would’ve been forgiven for passing on the duty of ushering in a new prime minister to her eldest son. Nobody would begrudge the 96-year-old a bit of rest at her holiday home in Scotland.

But the monarch had made a promise to live a life of service and duty – and right up to the very end she was determined not to break it.

Even though it was a slight deviation – held at Balmoral instead of in London, so she wouldn’t have to travel – she accepted Boris Johnson’s resignation and invited Liz Truss to be the new prime minister of the UK two days before taking her last breath.

The occasion at Balmoral Castle was light despite the gloomy weather, and the queen was in “good spirits”, says photographer Jane Barlow, who captured the moment, not knowing she was taking the last picture of the queen.

They made small talk, chatting about the weather and she snapped a few images while they waited for Truss to arrive, Barlow told Sky News. “I got a lot of smiles from her.”

Two days later the first worrying messages started to emerge. Although she’d cancelled a meeting with her Privy Council from her Scotland estate on doctor’s orders the previous day, nobody was alarmed.