JOHN MILLER, Crown Equerry for 26 years, was known among the upper reaches of the equine fraternity as the horsemaster to the Queen. It was an apt colloquialism for a courtier who, as well as organising the coach and horses element of royal pageantry and superintending the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, played a pivotal role in fostering the Royal Family’s passion for equine sports.

His knowledge of horses and equestrianism matched that of the Queen, to whom he was a friend and adviser. On his retirement he was allowed to continue overseeing the Royal Stud at Hampton Court, his employer, with some sensitivity, not wishing to detach him completely from a milieu he had made his own.

As Crown Equerry from 1961 to 1987 he looked after all the Queen’s horses, except her racehorses, and also the fleet of royal cars. His recruitment to the Royal Household followed a distinguished army career, spanning 22 years. He fought with daring and bravery in the fierce fighting after the Allied landings in Normandy, in which he was awarded the DSO and MC.

The high points of his calendar were the Queen’s Birthday Parade (Trooping the Colour), in which he always rode; the State Opening of Parliament; visits by foreign heads of state, and the procession down the course at Royal Ascot. His job was to ensure a faultless performance amid the pressure of massive security. During his tenure this included four royal wedding processions.

Television would catch him bowing members of the Royal Family into their carriages at Buckingham Palace and then bowing them out when they arrived at St Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey. Having seen them off he would, kitted out in his full dress uniform, hitch a lift on the back of a police motorcycle, and using a special backstreet route, speed ahead of them. “I always got there first,” he said. “I wanted to be sure there were no problems with the horses at both ends of the journey, and, just in case anything went wrong, to make sure that alternative car transport was available.”

John Mansel Miller was born in 1919, the third son of Brigadier Alfred Miller, who commanded the Royal Scots Greys. His great grandfather was MP for Glamorgan for 50 years and Father of the House of Commons. A stuffed bear, a gift to his father from Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, stood in the hall of the family home, Shotover House, near Oxford. Horses played a significant part in his boyhood, and he rode with the South Oxfordshire Hunt, of which his father was Master.

After Eton and Sandhurst, he was commissioned, in January 1939, into the Welsh Guards, and following the outbreak of war served with the British Expeditionary Force. In August 1944, as a major commanding the Prince of Wales’s company, 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, he was awarded the MC. The award’s citation said that in the North Western Europe theatre of operations, after D-Day, in the face of heavy shelling, he kept his beleaguered men together, continually exposing himself to enemy fire, with complete disregard for his survival. A month later he was awarded the DSO for re-establishing, again at great risk to himself, two companies of his regiment, scattered after a fierce enemy tank attack.

When Brussels was liberated in September that year he commanded the first British troops to enter the city. From November 1945 until August 1947 he was ADC to Field Marshal Lord Wilson, who headed the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington. His final military appointment was as Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards from 1958-61.

Miller was a candidate for Britain’s eventing team for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, but a vertebra broken in a fall robbed him of the chance. In 1972 he was a member of the gold medal-winning British team at the World Driving Championships at Münster, Germany, where he also won an individual silver medal. Two years later he was in the British team that won a gold medal at Frauenfeld, Switzerland.

When he became Crown Equerry he set out to prove that he was personally able to drive horses in any configuration of harness as expertly as the Queen’s professional coachmen. No one was more aware of the risks involved in driving horses in the heart of London amid crowds and dense traffic. The former editor of Horse and Hound, Michael Clayton, said that Miller had “a steely purpose” when riding or driving, and “an amazing disregard” for his own safety.

He was regarded as a brilliant rider across country in the hunting field, and also played polo and competed in show jumping. Crashing falls were dismissed as mere incidents. As a famous Master of the Quorn, the late Ulrica Murray Smith, put it: “Nerves? He hasn’t got strong nerves. He’s got no nerves at all.”

As well as his official duties he took an active role in nurturing and encouraging the Duke of Edinburgh’s competition and coach driving, the Prince of Wales’s polo and hunting and the Princess Royal’s three-day eventing.

Miller was, at various times, president of the Coaching Club; the National Light Horse Breeding Society; the British Driving Society; the Royal Windsor Horse Show Club; the Horse Rangers Association; the Cleveland Bay Horse Society, and the British Show Jumping Association. In retirement he remained an Extra Equerry to the Queen. He was unmarried.

He was appointed CVO in 1966, KCVO in 1974 and GCVO in 1987.

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Miller, GCVO, DSO, MC, Crown Equerry, 1961-87, was born on February 4, 1919. He died on May 17, 2006, aged 87.