Boris Johnson has branded the idea of him apologising to the late Queen over Brexit handlings as “total fiction”. The former Conservative prime minister had the Palace’s approval to go ahead with his plan to prorogue parliament for five weeks – the period between the end of one session of parliament and the state opening of the next – in order to stop legislation being passed to block a no-deal Brexit. Despite Queen Elizabeth reportedly being unhappy about it, she gave her approval on the phone to Mr Johnson.

“They hadn’t been properly prepared and warned when on holiday in August, and the Palace felt they would have been in a stronger position had they been contacted earlier and had a chance to think it through,” Sir Anthony Seldon said. The privy councillors secretly went to meet the Queen in Balmoral after the phone call where the meeting was completed within five minutes – the Queen “took it all in her stride”, according to a royal source.

Despite this, The Times reports that Historian Peter Hennessy said the prorogation “was bound to embarrass the Queen because it was going to split the parties and the nation and everybody. The Palace was deeply upset by this.”

Just weeks after the Queen gave her approval, pro-EU MPs introduced legislation to stop the prime minister pursuing a no-deal Brexit. The Supreme Court ruled that the advice to prorogue parliament was unlawful, which Mr Johnson told his aides: “You f***ed me! You told me it would be fine. This is a disaster. I’m completely f***ed. It’s over. Now, what am I going to do?”

Former prime minister Sir John Major urged Mr Johnson to make an “unreserved apology”, saying: “No prime minister must ever treat the monarch or parliament in this way again.”

The newspaper reports a Whitehall source saying at the time: “He was very scared about going to see her immediately after prorogation to apologise. He really minded about the Queen. He does not like to apologise, ever. The guy does not say sorry. It would have been so humiliating for him to have to apologise to her.”

Downing Street insiders were unsure if he apologised during his conversations with the Queen, with one saying: “It is perfectly possible that once he got in the room he just bottled it and never did.”

However, doubts over his apology were cemented when the former Tory prime minister said in an email that the reports of him doing so were “total fiction”.

“I cannot comment on the view of the late Queen but the idea of some sort of apology is total fiction,” he said.

He added: “For all I could tell from the Palace they thought the Supreme Court judgment was as peculiar as I did.”