Susie Cleverly on beating breast cancer: ‘I’m probably a nicer person to live with now’
There was a challenging moment last month when Susie Cleverly thought she might faint in the exalted company of the King and Queen.
She was attending the state banquet at the Palace of Versailles in the lavish Hall of Mirrors, with her husband James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary.
They were sitting at a 60-metre table along with 160 other invitees including the likes of Hugh Grant and Sir Mick Jagger, and the menu promised the finest of French food and wines.
But she had been rushing around all day, with no chance to eat since breakfast. She has been plagued by dizzy spells ever since undergoing treatment for breast cancer and when she stood up her legs suddenly went from under her.
“The King and Queen had just entered the room and we all stood. Suddenly I felt really dizzy, I went deaf and then my vision went and I felt really sick. James made me sit down and got me some water. I managed to stand up and curtsy just as King Charles and Queen Camilla walked past, but it could have been a disaster. So embarrassing.”
It seems Susie, 50 has lost none of her indomitable ‘keep calm and carry on’ spirit since The Telegraph spoke to her last October, when she was keen to raise awareness of lesser known breast cancer symptoms – she was diagnosed in December 2021, after spotting skin puckering under her right breast.
Following a single mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy she finally finished treatment in April this year. Yet she has been steadfastly at her husband’s side throughout what can only be described as a tumultuous year in politics.
James, 54, was made Foreign Secretary by Liz Truss on Sept 6 2022, just three months after Susie had a mastectomy to remove her right breast. Two days later Elizabeth II died.
Susie was at James’s side at the Queen’s State Funeral on Sept 19 that year and also the Coronation the following May. James kept his job as Foreign Secretary when Rishi Sunak moved into No 10 in October 2022.
“James has been amazing. He’s always there for me when he can be. When he was appointed Foreign Secretary in September last year, I’d already had my mastectomy and I’d had the chemo and the horrors of all the side effects. So I was really lucky with that.”
Following Susie’s mastectomy, they had hoped she would be cancer-free. But soon afterwards her operation doctors found live cancer cells in her breast, as one of the tumours, a more slow-growing type of cancer, had not responded to the treatment. She was put on a newer drug Kadcyla, which she stopped taking in April.
“It’s so clever,” she says. “It’s like a chemo, but more targeted. It’s injected into my veins but rather than attacking all the cells it goes in and blasts the ones it’s looking for.”
The side effects of Kadcyla were nothing compared to the “tsunami of horror” she endured after chemo, but it still left her with bone-shattering exhaustion. “I felt like I had been hit by a bus, and I have neuropathy. My feet are really numb right now. It hurts to walk on them.”
Her fingernails turned black and have yet to fully recover. And, more seriously, she “started to get palpitations and just felt like ‘oh my god’, my heart is going to burst out of my chest.” So she is on two types of medication.
“But I’m still alive and can still be with my family. I’m not what I was, but it’s fine. Some people have it far worse than me. So I can’t complain.”
Fortunately, the drugs worked and she is now cancer-free. But after her treatment ended, out of the blue her mood plummeted. “As soon as I’d finished the Kadcyla I just felt very sad and down. I’ve never felt like that before. Everything was impossible. I was overwhelmed by having to do simple tasks. I’d think, ‘Oh this is ridiculous,’ I should be able to put the washing on.”
James was telling me to slow down, saying: ‘You don’t need to do all these things’. But I felt guilty. Because I was at home, I’d been cured, I should be back doing all the things that I was doing before.”
It’s possible, she thinks, that the build-up of drugs in her system “messed with my brain” and being plunged into an early menopause by the cancer treatment can’t have helped? “Exactly, the combination of it all was, ‘Waaa’ and I spun out of control.”
After a busy year in which her husband visited more than 56 countries including Ukraine, James has been around more this summer and her boys – Freddy, 21 who was at university, and Rupert,19, who had finished his A levels, have been home for the summer holidays.
“We’ve been together more and that’s really helped,” she says, “You could sit and wallow in self pity. But what’s the point of that? You’ve got to crack on with it.”
And crack on, she has. The day before we met, she had just returned from the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, where she wowed the press in a stunning red John Lewis tea dress.
It must have been an exhausting week, nonetheless she squeezed in our interview before picking up her youngest son Rupert, 19, from university, that afternoon. She greets me at the door of her arts and crafts home in south-east London, slender and chic in black jeans and a silk shirt, her now bob-length hair, regrown after chemo, held back in a scarf tied as a hairband.
We sit, with a border terrier each, on a pair of velvet sofas, tucked into the corner of the sitting room. The still life paintings on the walls are by James’s grandfather, the room is lined with paperbacks and political books, including a biography by Maggie Thatcher.
Susie met James at the University of West London. They married in 2000 and she gave up her job in an IT training company when Freddy was born. She describes James as her “rock”. James has said that he “could not speak or sleep” when he found out she had breast cancer.
How does she think the illness has impacted their relationship? “We appreciate each other more now and make more of an effort to do things together because you don’t know when it’s going to be your last moment.”
It’s this desire to spend as much time with her husband that motivates her to attend events, like the Conservative Party Conference, even when she’s exhausted. “I love going because I’m a member of the Conservative Party and it means I get to hang out with James. It’s great to actually see him do his work.”
At the Conference she was snapped sitting next to Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty. Does she consider her a friend? “Yes, she’s great, we were on a committee together and we became friends. I don’t see a huge amount of her because she’s very very busy, but we text every now and then.” Is she nice? “Really, really lovely.”
After her cancer diagnosis there were flowers from Boris and Carrie Johnson and numerous texts of support from other MPs and their partners. But the real support came from close family and friends.
While Susie’s mother bought her a bigger freezer, her older sister Danielle, 51 who is a nutritionist, would drive up from Sussex to London once a week to cook for her and fill it with “lots of super healthy stuff like butternut squash soups and was an incredible support to me”.
Susie’s sister was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months after Susie. “Though fortunately she is now in the clear after a lumpectomy and five days of radiotherapy.”
Her children were there for her too. Freddy was away at university but came home frequently, while Rupert was with her after school. “He would come and sit on the bed and I would try to gather up my energy so I could be with him at supper time, but often I would just have to go back to bed. So for him, I think it was tough. My swollen face was covered in spots.
“I had no hair. So to see your mother go through that. I think it was pretty shocking. I know he’s relieved now that everything is on the up.”
James recently said in an interview that Susie was not only cancer-free but also that she has more energy? Does she? “Yes, I do.” The turning point came when she joined the gym and started to play tennis with James at the weekends. “I think that’s really helped,” she says. But who wins? “Me,” she says laughing. “Always”
They’ve even been going to the gym together. “I joined for my mental health, because it helps me get out of the house, and James came along too. I think he wanted to support me,” she says, adding that the boys sometimes join them and that Rupert has written her gym programme. She’s even started running. “I love it and it’s good for my heart, though the dogs aren’t so keen” she says.
All this activity has also been good for the Foreign Secretary’s waistline, offsetting the numerous diplomatic dinners. “I don’t know how much he’s lost but he’ll say: ‘Oh, I’ve gone down again’.”
In the past she has said: “I’ve never been a great worrier, but now I embrace everything. I’m happy to do public speaking now, which I would have worried about before. Now I think, what’s the worst that can happen?” She recently spoke at an event for Foreign Sisters UK helping to raise funds for breast cancer research.
Has cancer changed her in any other way? “I’m probably a nicer person to live with now,” she adds laughing. “I don’t worry about things that don’t matter. Before I’d be: ‘Put your shoes away,’ now I don’t care. It’s something my children are fully exploiting.”
At a dinner recently a “quite high profile man” took her aside to say thank you for speaking so openly in the press. His own family had been affected by cancer and the article in the Telegraph had got them talking.
“That’s why I do this. And also of course to raise awareness so more people get an early diagnosis. Mine (the cancer) was on its way out of my breast (into my body) and I’m so grateful that they caught it and to everyone who saved me.”
There is of course a chance that the cancer could come back. “The type of breast cancer I have (triple positive), has a high risk of returning, particularly in the first five years. But the drug Kadcyla, should reduce that risk dramatically.
So hopefully I should be all right,” she says, reaching to touch the coffee table. “I don’t look too far into the future, every year is a bonus.”