Prince Philip lived with pancreatic cancer for nearly eight years before his death, new book reveals
A new book reveals Prince Philip lived with pancreatic cancer for nearly eight years before his death.
Queen Elizabeth II, serialized exclusively in the Mail on Sunday. In Elizabeth, biographer Hugo Vickers explains 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, and his death certificate read ‘old age’.
Vickers explained that on the last night of his life, Prince Philip refused to allow nurses and shuffled down the castle corridor with his Zimmer frame, then poured himself a beer and drank it in the Oak Room, his living room.
He added: ‘The next morning he got up, had a bath, said he wasn’t feeling well and slipped away quietly.
‘By this point, he had been living with pancreatic cancer for nearly eight years; this was much longer than the normal survival time from diagnosis.’
Queen Elizabeth was not present when her husband of 73 years died and was said to be saddened to ‘leave without saying goodbye, as so often happens in life’.
Philip was hospitalized in December 2011 for a coronary artery blockage and was treated at the private London Clinic in Marylebone in 2013.
Prince Philip, who died in April 2021 at the age of 99, was quite healthy until the last decade of his life. Above: Prince Philip leaves hospital in March 2021. He died the following month
Prince Philip was hospitalized for 11 days due to abdominal surgery in 2013. He turned 92 while receiving treatment. Above: The Duke of Edinburgh leaving the London Clinic following treatment in 2013
Doctors detected a shadow on his pancreas and ‘cut it right across his abdomen’ for exploratory surgery. ‘The verdict was that it was inoperable pancreatic cancer,’ writes Vickers.
He resigned from royal duties four years later.
Vickers says there were “so serious rumors” about Philip’s health in 2019 that plans were made to postpone the general election if he died.
‘But then [he] came to life… Someone said he was being sensitive to the public and trying to survive so as not to disrupt the election.’
Read HUGO VICKERS’ full account of the former Duke of Edinburgh’s final hours, exclusively on Mail+.
