Prince Philip lived with pancreatic cancer for nearly eight years before his death, a major new book reveals.
In Queen Elizabeth II, serialised exclusively in the Mail on Sunday, biographer Hugo Vickers discloses that the then Duke of Edinburgh was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in June 2013 during an 11-day stay in hospital.
He died at Windsor Castle in April 2021, two months before his 100th birthday, with ‘old age’ listed on his death certificate.
On the last night of his life, Prince Philip gave nurses the slip and shuffled along a corridor at the castle on his Zimmer frame before pouring himself a beer and drinking it in the Oak Room, a sitting room, Vickers reveals.
He added: ‘The following morning, he got up, had a bath, said he did not feel well and quietly slipped away.
‘By this point, he had lived with pancreatic cancer for nearly eight years – far longer than the usual survival time from diagnosis.’
Queen Elizabeth was not there when her husband of 73 years died and was said to have been upset that ‘as so often in life, he left without saying goodbye’.
Philip was hospitalised in December 2011 for a blocked coronary artery, and in 2013 was treated at the private London Clinic in Marylebone.
Doctors detected a shadow on his pancreas, and ‘cut him right across his stomach’ for exploratory surgery. ‘The verdict was inoperable pancreatic cancer,’ Vickers writes.
Four years later, he stepped down from royal duties.
Vickers says that in 2019 there were ‘such serious rumours’ about Philip’s health that plans were drawn up to postpone the general election if he died.
‘But then [he] perked up… Someone said he was being public-spirited and making an effort to survive so as not to upset the election.’
Read HUGO VICKERS’ full account of the former Duke of Edinburgh’s final hours exclusively on Mail+.
