JOHN BROOKE-LITTLE served for more than 40 years as one of the Royal heralds.

As a teenager he had been attracted to the idea of a career in either the Roman Catholic Church or the theatre, and later reflected that his career at the College of Arms had encompassed what were for him the best aspects of both of those.

He played the role of herald with great aplomb. He served from 1952 to 1953 on the staff put together by the Earl Marshal to plan the Queen’s Coronation.

A particular task allotted to him was reporting to the police the details of the lunatics who wrote to the Earl Marshal claiming to be the rightful sovereign and threatening to turn up on Coronation Day.

In 1956 he was appointed Bluemantle Pursuivant, becoming one of the 13 officers of arms who make up the College of Arms. The English heralds are best known to the public for their appearance, wands in hands, in their richly embroidered tabards, at the State Opening of Parliament and at the Garter Service at Windsor in June each year. Brooke-Little took great enjoyment from the theatricality of these two pieces of state ceremonial.

For the rest of the year heralds have a more mundane existence designing new coats of arms, tracing pedigrees and identifying arms for antique dealers and auctioneers. Brooke-Little soon established a flourishing practice in such heraldic and genealogical work, and was imaginative in finding ways to expand it.

He was advanced to the office of Richmond Herald in 1967, and in 1980 became Norroy and Ulster King of Arms. In 1995 he was appointed Clarenceux King of Arms on the death of Sir Anthony Wagner.

Wagner had been appointed Clarenceux before the introduction of compulsory retirement at 70 for heralds and, despite blindness, insisted on retaining his office until death. As a result Brooke-Little was Clarenceux for only 21 months, retiring from the College of Arms on reaching 70 in 1997.

John Philip Brooke Brooke-Little was born in 1927, in Blackheath, London. He was the son of Raymond Brooke-Little, an electrical engineer, and his second wife, Constance Egan, later editor of Home Chat and author of many children’s stories including the Epaminondas books and the adventures of Jummy the baby elephant.

He was educated at Clayesmore, the progressive co-educational public school founded in 1896 by Alexander Devine. While serving as chairman of its board of governers from 1971 to 1983 Brooke-Little oversaw the grant of a coat of arms to the school in 1979.

In his youth he was a keen cross-country runner and energetic beagler. This youthful athleticism seemed improbable to those who only knew him in later life, as by early middle age he had assumed the demeanour of a much older man.

He was bald and short in stature, and his rotund figure was emphasised by the roundness of both his face and the lenses of his spectacles. He adopted an imperturbable air, and good news or bad would be met with an insouciant rolling wobble of his head.

His astute opinions on heraldic matters were given in quiet measured tones, often with his eyes shut.

Brooke-Little did much to encourage popular interest in and support for heraldry. He had founded a heraldry society at his school, and in 1947, while teaching at a prep school before going up to New College, Oxford, he founded the forerunner of what in 1950 was to become the Heraldry Society. He was to serve as the convivial and good-humoured chairman of the society for 50 years, editing many of its publications. It currently has a membership of more than 900. He lectured widely on heraldry and ceremonial, and made several lecture tours to the United States.

Brooke-Little had a felicitous pen and wrote often on heraldry. In particular he was co-editor and then editor of the standard work of reference on English heraldry by Boutell from 1963 to 1983. In 1973 he produced An Heraldic Alphabet, an invaluable guide to the arcane terminology of his subject, which is still in print.

A stroke in 1994, which left his mobility and speech partly impaired, brought him suddenly the genuine air of old age he had only previously pretended to, but it also revealed his underlying vitality and strength of will. He continued to work, still making the journey up from his home in Lower Heyford in Oxfordshire to the College of Arms in the City.

Brooke-Little was appointed MVO (4th class) in 1969 and CVO in 1984. He married in 1960 Mary Pierce, who with their three sons and daughter, survives him.

John Brooke-Little, CVO, herald, was born on April 6, 1927. He died on February 13, 2006, aged 78.