Monty Roberts breaks down many times when he talks about the Queen’s death. Her loss is so painful because it’s deeply personal.
His more than 200 meetings and just as many phone calls with our late Queen shows how much the Californian champion horse trainer and the monarch loved each other’s company.
Monty, 87, says: “No one at the funeral will understand the close friendship the Queen and I had.
“They won’t believe she could be such good friends with a cowboy. But I know.”
Monty is revered around the world for his compassionate, non-violent animal training methods. He’s known as the Real Horse Whisperer, after the Robert Redford film and book of the same name. And he has Her Majesty to thank for his fame.
“The Queen read about me in a few magazines which landed on her desk back in 1989, then she asked her horse manager for his thoughts on what he read. The horse manager said, ‘It’s hogwash. You can’t do what he says he does’.
“So she sent Sir John Miller to see me in California to see if what they were writing was true.
“I thought it was a trick – was this man in a little tweed suit really sent to me by the Queen? He reported back to her that he could not believe what he saw.”
Soon afterwards, Monty and his wife Pat received an invitation to Windsor Castle in the first week of April 1989. Prince Philip, the Queen and the Queen Mother watched incredulously as, 27 minutes after meeting a difficult horse, Monty had a rider on it.
“The Queen Mother was the first to come and meet me, and the tears were flowing down her face,” says Monty. “Like a California cowboy, I reached out to put my hands on her shoulders to steady her and her minders stiffened, so I put my arms down.
“She leaned on my shoulder and said, ‘I’ve just seen the most beautiful thing in my life’.
“The Queen was overjoyed because it proved that everything she thought for the past 30 years about non-violent training of animals was true.”
After their first couple of meetings, both relaxed in each other’s company. “Very soon, every moment I had with the Queen was off-guard,” says Monty.
“Our lunches together in her palaces were no longer pinch-me moments. I was part of her life, she was part of mine and I don’t think any one of us thought it was strange.
"My wife Pat and I stayed with her at Buckingham Palace for weeks at a time and she treated us like family.”
In 1996, Monty followed royal orders when the Queen told him: “There must be a book – you have to take your work to the world.” His autobiography, The Man Who Listens to Horses, sold in 41 countries was a best seller for 58 weeks.
The Queen bestowed royal approval on Monty’s go-to outfit of a sky-blue shirt, scarlet cravat and beige cowboy hat.
“Early on, I had to take my hat off every time I spoke to the Queen.
"And the Queen eventually told me, ‘Not all men have to take their hat off when they’re speaking with the Queen. If you are in uniform, you don’t take your hat off. So I dub this your uniform.”
The Queen clearly appreciated Monty’s work, making him a member of the Royal Victorian Order for his services in 2011.
But it’s the small gestures of friendship which Monty treasures even more than the medals or gifts such as corkscrews saved from the Windsor Castle fire and a lead plaque stamped the royal crest.
He says: “Can you believe the Queen always took my phone calls? Only once I was told she couldn’t speak to me because she was with Northern Ireland’s politicians.
“Right then I heard, ‘Monty! What are you doing? I’m out of my
meeting to talk to you’. I just about fell off my chair.”
Monty is an expert storyteller when he shares his memories of the Queen. They rode together along the river route she had ridden with President Ronald Reagan.
Another time, while riding “just behind all the railings the tourists stick their hands through”, an elderly lady spotted the two on horseback and shouted to the Queen: “Yoohoo! Do you work here?”
Quick as a flash, the Queen replied, ‘Yes, I do, quite often’.” The only time Monty ever came close to a telling off was during their final meeting, in Sandringham in November 2019, when he brought up a taboo subject.
“We were in a little farmhouse, it was a hideaway for her and Prince Philip.
“We were having tea with the corgis all around us. It had to do with Boris [Johnson] in that I said, ‘Your Majesty, it’s so important with horses that we stay true, we’re honest and we never lie because a horse will not lie to us.
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get our politicians to make the same compromise?’
“And the Queen said, ‘We don’t talk about politics. Don’t bring up politics to me. You and I are above the political world’. So I kept my mouth shut.”
Monty was, fittingly, in a pen with horses on his Santa Ynez Valley farm when he was told the news of Her Majesty’s passing.
“I was working with a very difficult horse. And I watched Pat and my daughter Debbie come together at the top of the fence looking sombre.
“I’d already heard the Queen was under constant care but said to myself, it’ll be OK – she’s gonna come through and she’ll be bouncing around again.
“But when I finished working with that horse, they said, ‘Brace yourself. The Queen has died’.
“That moment will never be forgotten by this cowboy. A lot of important people are saying we have to let the Queen go. But I can’t let go.”
She left Monty facing a life-long mission. “I promised the Queen I would follow her lead to take the non-violent training of animals and non-violence in people to the world.
“She still wants me to use every minute I have to bring that to realisation. She was a world leader who wanted an assistant to take her principles to the rest of the world.
“People don’t know just how hard the Queen worked to get the things done. She learned in the Second World War that animals were treated with violence, and people too. She wanted to change that world.”
On Monday, Monty faces his hardest challenge yet: controlling his emotions during the Queen’s funeral. “It’s not going to be easy for me,” he says, his voice cracking. “This is my last meeting with the Queen.
“British people might find it hard to believe their Queen enjoyed being with a cowboy. But she did.”
