Details of meeting with the Queen and fleas in No.10 among revelations in Liz Truss’ new memoir

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Details of her first and final meeting with the late Queen and fleas being in No. 10 are among the tales revealed in Liz Truss’ new memoir.

The first excerpt of her e book, titled Ten Years to Save the West, made a number of candid confessions together with how her husband predicted how her quick premiership would finish in tears and that she didn’t hearken to the Queen’s recommendation.

The bombshell revelations embrace that she spent a number of of her six weeks as prime minister “itching” as a result of Downing Street was “infested” with the pests.

In extracts from the e book printed by the Daily Mail, Truss admitted she went into “a state of shock” when advised of Queen Elizabeth II’s dying in 2022.

Of her historic meeting at Balmoral in Scotland, which occurred simply two days earlier than the monarch’s dying, Truss says the 96-year-old Queen “seemed to have grown frailer” since she had final been in the public eye.

However, she wrote in an excerpt printed in the Daily Mail that there “simply wasn’t any sense that the end would come as quickly as it did.”

The memoir particulars how the “machine kicked into action” when phrase reached Number 10 that the Queen wouldn’t be capable of be part of through video hyperlink, as deliberate, for the formal swearing-in of new ministers.

“My black mourning dress was fetched from my house in Greenwich, south London,” she wrote.

“Frantic phone calls took place with Buckingham Palace. I started to think about what on earth I was going to say if the unthinkable happened.

“On Thursday, we received the solemn news that the Queen had died peacefully at Balmoral. To be told this on only my second full day as Prime Minister felt utterly unreal. In a state of shock, I found myself thinking: ‘Why me, why now?’”

She shares particulars of her first and closing meeting with the Queen.

Ms Truss wrote: “That Tuesday, September 6, 2022, she was standing up as she greeted me in her drawing room. I was told she’d made a special effort to do so but she gave no hint of discomfort throughout our discussion.

“This was only my second one-on-one audience with her. On the previous occasion, after I’d been removed from a different job in the Government, she’d remarked that being a woman in politics was tough.

“For about 20 minutes, we discussed politics — and it was clear she was completely attuned to everything that was happening, as well as being typically sharp and witty. There simply wasn’t any sense that the end would come as quickly as it did.

Ms Truss, whose tenure in Downing Street lasted just 49 days after her disastrous mini-budget unleashed economic chaos, also revealed the late Queen told her to “pace yourself”.

“Maybe I should have listened,” the former PM stated.

She was additionally scathing about the realities of residing in No 10.

“The place was infested with fleas,” she wrote. “Some claimed that this was down to Boris and Carrie’s dog Dilyn, but there was no conclusive evidence. In any case, the entire place had to be sprayed with flea killer. I spent several weeks itching.”

The “most difficult thing to get used to”, she wrote, was that “spontaneous excursions were all but impossible: I was effectively a prisoner”.

She recruited her teenage daughters, Liberty and Frances, to run errands “because it was easier for them to leave the buildings without being spotted”. Of their time in one of the most well-known addresses in the nation she stated: “I’m pleased they at least managed to fit in a sleepover with their friends. And they did get to visit the nuclear bunker.”

Before transferring into Downing Street, Ms Truss revealed that her husband predicted her premiership “would all end in tears’ in her new memoir.

The former prime minister describes the moment she learnt that her predecessor, Boris Johnson, was forced to resign while in Bali at the time as foreign secretary and said: “As I walked along the beach in Indonesia I started crying.”

“Even Hugh [her husband], who predicted it would all end in tears, accepted that this was the moment I was expected to run and that if I didn’t, people would say I had bottled it,” Truss writes.

But the MP for South West Norfolk defended her method in her memoir, suggesting the “pro-Remain” Treasury, Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility had been “barriers to our plans”.