Boris Johnson heard of F-35 crash from the late Queen Elizabeth, memoir reveals
Boris Johnson has revealed he found out about the moment an F-35, embarked on HMS Queen Elizabeth, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea from the late Queen herself.
In an upcoming memoir, which is being serialised by the Mail On Sunday, the former Prime Minister said it was "doubly embarrassing" to hear about the incident from the Queen.
Mr Johnson said the late Queen sometimes managed "to know things before [he] had been briefed".
"It was she who broke it to me that a very expensive RAF F-35 fighter plane had blown a gasket and dropped off its aircraft carrier and into the drink because someone had left a plastic tray over the air intake.
"Doubly embarrassing to hear it from the Queen."
The former PM also said the Queen "had a deep personal knowledge, not just of history but of history-makers".
"In her 70-year reign, she had met all the people who really made the modern world: from Charles de Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron, from Harry Truman to Joe Biden, from Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping (whose security goons, much to her indignation, had once tried to infiltrate her royal coach)," he revealed.
"If I forgot the name of George II's battle or the late prime minister of Zambia, she would immediately snap 'Dettingen' or 'Kenneth Kaunda', like a pub quiz winner."
Mr Johnson also revealed he spoke to the late Queen Elizabeth about Russia's invasion in Ukraine on the day of his formal resignation.
He said he mentioned the UK's "difficulties in persuading our Indian friends to take a tougher line with the Russians", to which the Queen "remembered something the former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru" told her in the 1950s.
"'He told me that India will always side with Russia and that some things will never change. They just are,'" Mr Johnson said Her Majesty told him.
"I cite that as an illustration of her amazing ability to reassure and to contextualise.
"Two days later she died."
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