Prince Philip was known for his stoicism and not wanting a fuss to be made over him, and in his latest book, Queen Elizabeth II, royal biographer Hugo Vickers spoke about the late Duke of Edinburgh's final night.
Speaking on HELLO!'s A Right Royal Podcast, he shared: "The night before he died, he went along on his Zimmer frame to the Oak Room, which was that room above the entrance out of which the Queen's car came out for the funeral, and he was having a beer all by himself.
"He gave his nurses the slip. He did not want to live to be 100, and he just slipped away. He got up, I think he had a bath and didn't feel well and lay down and that was it."
The royal biographer also spoke about how Philip would likely have disliked being celebrated if he had made it to 100; he died two months shy of the milestone. "He absolutely did not want to be celebrated," he said. "If you remember, nothing was planned for it, had he been well enough, I suspect that all you would have seen is him going to church.
"He did go to church for his 80th and 90th birthdays and for his 90th birthday, his family came from all over the world, from Canada, from Germany. And their line was that it was just so nice that he was there and they could celebrate that with him, because often they would just come over for a funeral, but in this case, I think there were about 120 of them."
In extracts from the book, Hugo also revealed that Philip passed away when the late Queen, who he had been married to for 73 years, wasn't by his side.
Hugo wrote in the book: "The Queen was not there when he died. There had often been times in earlier days when she had asked the staff to let her know when Philip was leaving, only to be told 'His Royal Highness left 20 minutes ago'. She took the line, I was told, that she was 'absolutely furious that, as so often in life, he left without saying goodbye'."
Other revelations
The book, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail, has also revealed other insights into the life of the late monarch, including how in the latter stages of her life, Elizabeth II had "much on her mind", from family issues with Prince Harry and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as well as the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.
"Whenever Prince Harry called his grandmother, she asked her lady-in-waiting to stay with her," Hugo wrote. "The distress the Sussexes caused the Queen in the last years of her life cannot be overestimated."
He added: "How do I know any of this? My new book is based on 60 years of observation and research, at first from afar (rather like a trainspotter or stamp collector) but gradually closer to the centre and more focused. Over a period of 55 years, I must have met her more than 40 times. Sometimes these were just formal meetings, but at other times there was a chance to talk."
