Insolent Mockery from the Lower Orders

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Miller is dead.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Miller, who died on Wednesday aged 87, was Crown Equerry to the Queen from 1961 to 1987; besides his court duties, he was an excellent horseman in his own right, and introduced the Prince of Wales to hunting and Prince Philip to carriage driving.

Born on February 4 1919, John Mansel Miller was the third son of Brigadier-General Alfred Douglas Miller, CBE, DSO, of Shotover House, Wheatley, Oxfordshire. His mother, Ella, was a descendant of Andrew Fletcher, the distinguished 17th-century political writer, and of the Earls of Wemyss and March.

. . .

Miller took part in more than 64 birthday parades and rehearsals. Most of these occasions passed off flawlessly, but the Queen's official birthday celebration on June 13 1981 was an exception.

Miller was already nervous for superstitious reasons, on account of the date. And in the event the Queen was shot at in The Mall; the Queen Mother slipped on a staircase, injuring her leg, as she left the Duke of Wellington's office from which she had been watching the ceremony; Prince Philip's charger went lame, and his groom was injured in an accident.

. . .

Inevitably his duties brought him into close contact with the Royal Family. He blew the hunting horn at Balmoral to welcome the Waleses home from their honeymoon, and was responsible for mounting members of the family when they expressed an interest in riding.

. . .

A courtier through and through, Miller was effortlessly polite and wholly devoted to his Sovereign - though he was rather less genial to those whose social position was unclear to him."


Ah, they just don't make them like that any more.