King Charles “did not dismiss” former Prime Minister Liz Truss with his “oh dear” comment, a royal biographer has claimed.
At the time, many suggested His Majesty was expressing public feelings towards Truss after a clip of him saying “back again … dear, oh dear,” went viral in September 2022.
However, the author Robert Hardman claimed the monarch’s words were misinterpreted and that he was trying to put the Prime Minister “at her ease”.
According to Hardman, King Charles was “sympathising” with Truss, who had already travelled to the Palace earlier in the day for a privy council meeting.
King Charles ‘did not dismiss’ former Prime Minister Liz Truss with ‘oh dear’ comment
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The author said: “It’s a very King Charles-ish way of saying ‘Oh, you poor thing, you’ve had to come back again’.
“It’s a sort of putting someone at their ease kind of remark.”
Hardman continued telling Times Radio: “So the true story was actually he was being nice to her; it wasn’t an unguarded barb, it was actually good manners.”
The author interviewed Truss for his book, ‘Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story’, who said she found the King “very considerate”.
Liz Truss’s curtsy to King Charles went viral in September 2022
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The former Prime Minister detailed how the King had asked to meet her daughters when she came to the Palace to announce her resignation.
The following month, at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, Charles asked after them, remembering that they were good at maths.
Hardman added: “Clearly, you know, this was a pretty painful episode those 40, 50 days.
“But she said that actually the King was very charming.
The King told Truss ‘back again … dear, oh dear’ during their weekly audience
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Royal author defended King Charles’s choice of wording in his new book
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“He’s a considerate monarch.”
According to the author, the King “felt sympathy for a woman destined to go down in the history books for the shortest premiership in British politics”.
In his book, Hardman wrote: “He himself had already exceeded the country’s shortest reign (Lady Jane Grey) and would surpass that of Edward V a month later.”
