Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

Lord De Mauley Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, the breadth of wisdom, experience and accomplishments of Her Majesty the Queen, as well as the extent and depth of her service to our nation, are such that a single Member of your Lordships’ House can never do her justice. Most noble Lords have spoken of that service and of her great contribution. As Her Majesty’s Master of the Horse, I want to focus on the aspects of the Queen’s life which involve horses, an area where I like to think she gets her enjoyment, relaxation and excitement, but where she also makes a significant contribution to our public life.

Perhaps her best-known equestrian passion is for her racehorses. She has owned winners of all five English classics, except—tantalisingly—the Derby, in which her Aureole came second in 1953. Aureole, incidentally, itself sired a Derby winner. Among her best horses were Carrozza, which won the Oaks in 1957; Pall Mall, which won the 2,000 Guineas in 1958; Highclere, which won the 1,000 Guineas in 1974; Dunfermline, which won both the Oaks and the St Leger in 1977, an astonishing performance; and Estimate, which, despite not winning a classic, was one of her best horses, winning the Queen’s Vase in 2012 and the Gold Cup the following year. Each of these horses won other important races and Her Majesty has had, and continues to have, other very high-class and successful horses; these are just some of her bigger winners.

Despite the difficulty of competing at the top today, against the world’s massive racing establishments, which are equipped to breed a multitude of foals to produce one good one, compared to Her Majesty’s relatively modest number of brood mares, I think I am right in saying that the Queen had her highest ever number of winners last year and has had no fewer than five winners in the month of May this year alone—and, in addition, five seconds. She looks sure to have a fistful of runners at Royal Ascot.

The Queen’s approach to the breeding of racehorses is that of an intellectual. Which bloodline will nick with which? Is the aim a sprinter or a classic horse? What are the logistics of getting the mare to the stallion, many of the best of which are overseas? The breeding of racehorses is a long-term game. The classics are run by three year-olds and the planning of the breeding will not have been undertaken overnight. Luckily, patience is an asset of which the Queen is not in short supply. The naming of racehorses is, for the Queen, something akin to an advanced crossword. What would one call a foal by the stallion Night of Thunder, out of a mare called Free Verse, but Slipofthepen?

Other noble Lords have commented on the Queen’s sense of humour. We were discussing the other day a horse she was, unusually, rather disappointed with. At the age of 96, she told me, “I could run faster than it in gumboots”.

Her Majesty’s expertise is not restricted to racehorses. As my noble friend the Leader of the House said, at the Royal Windsor Horse Show two weeks ago she entered, among others, her homebred Highland mare, Balmoral Leia. Leia triumphed, not only in her class but as champion, and then as supreme champion in- hand mountain and moorland pony.

The Queen takes a considerable interest in breeding and has been a strong supporter of some our rarer breeds, just some examples of which are the fell pony and the Cleveland bay, the latter important to the world of carriage driving in general and the Royal Mews in particular. The Queen also pays considerable attention to the life after racing of her horses, a notable example of which is her retrained racehorse Barbershop, formerly trained by Nicky Henderson, which ran with distinction in the Queen’s colours, winning eight races and being placed in the 2009 King George VI Chase. He followed this up with a string of successes in the show ring.

The Queen is well known to be an excellent horse- woman and horse-master herself, most notably when riding in her birthday parade in 1981. As my noble friend the Leader mentioned, when a teenager let off a starting pistol next to her, her charger, Burmese, bounced, but Her Majesty patted its neck and carried on as if nothing had happened. She rode in nearly 40 birthday parades between 1947 and 1986, 16 of them on Burmese, a gift from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and has subsequently attended in a carriage.

I had a stark personal experience of the Queen’s horse-mastership when accompanying her round the stables at the Royal Mews before Christmas in 2019—so, comparatively recently. We came to one rather excitable young horse whose stable door had been flung open, between the sovereign and which there was only fresh air—and not very much of it. As its forefeet left the ground, I was calculating how it would be possible for me to insert myself between the Queen and the horse, bearing in mind that I had to navigate around or over either the Crown equerry or the head coachman, to neither of whom it appeared to have occurred that a disaster of global importance was about to occur. While I was still working on it, and indeed while said horse’s feet were still airborne, the monarch lifted a forefinger and firmly said, “No”—at which the horse in question sprang to attention, and disaster was averted.

I know that the entire horse world, like the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, would want to record its huge congratulations to the Queen on yet another extraordinary achievement in her Platinum Jubilee.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Lord De Mauley Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, others have spoken and will speak about the huge range of interests and skills that the Duke of Edinburgh possessed. As Master of the Horse, I will focus on his contribution to equestrianism and equestrian sports. His Royal Highness was, from an early age, a keen sportsman, playing cricket and hockey with great dexterity and, in the late 1940s, he began an active polo career. He quickly became a remarkable player, twice leading his team to victory in the gold cup for the British open and founding the Guards Polo Club at Windsor. Prince Philip reached a handicap of five, taking the sport much more seriously than most amateur players.

By the time that he retired from active polo in 1971, he had developed a love for carriage driving, taking it up competitively in the 1970s. After his second competition, the European championships, held at Windsor, he recalled:

“I came in not quite last, but very nearly.”


Ultimately, he represented Great Britain in six world and three European championships, in a career that spanned more than 10 years, becoming a world-class carriage driver and winning team gold in the 1980 world championship.

Prince Philip became president of the International Federation for Equestrian Sports—known by its French abbreviation, the FEI—in 1964, and served until 1986. A true leader, he recognised that more could be done to bring order to elite competition. Deeply involved, thanks to his true love for horses, His Royal Highness channelled his passion into driving standards up across a broad range of equestrian sports, writing the rules for international carriage-driving competitions and introducing new disciplines.

While, in the equestrian world, his name is most closely associated with carriage driving and polo, he instigated the FEI Jumping Nations Cup series—now a major part of the elite athletes calendar—during his tenure as president of the FEI, and he actively encouraged the launch of the FEI Jumping World Cup. He was also instrumental in the creation of the FEI World Equestrian Games.

His Royal Highness became president of the Royal Windsor Horse Show in 1991 and took a close and personal interest. He had a watchful eye and your Lordships will not be surprised that he often made suggestions to the committee of ways to improve the show and its competition. He created the Prince Philip pony club games, and the nation’s competition at Windsor was a highlight that demonstrated his interest in youth development.

St Matthew, at chapter 5, verse 15, says:

“Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel”.


His Royal Highness used all his considerable assets to shine a light on equestrian sports, in the United Kingdom, around the Commonwealth and internationally. His passion for all things equestrian was of course shared by the Queen and passed on to their children, particularly the Prince of Wales, who was also a successful polo player, and the Princess Royal, the first member of the British Royal Family to compete at an Olympic Games, who succeeded him as president of the FEI.

The Duke of Edinburgh was an honorary member of the Jockey Club from 1947, and enthusiastically supported the Queen in her great passion for racing. The Duke of Edinburgh handicap was named for him at Royal Ascot. A high point was his presenting the Queen with the Queen’s Vase after Estimate won that race in 2012. Not to be outdone, he had owned the winner of the 1968 English Greyhound Derby.

He was an extraordinarily fearless horseman, and his impact on equestrian sport is remarkable. He was famously direct and much enjoyed the company of the family of carriage drivers, who regarded him truly as one of them, and of his grooms, who were devoted to him, not least for his interest in them. You knew when he was not entirely approving of something, be it the design of a horse-box, the way someone was driving a pair or a team, or something being in the wrong place in the picnic box. He expressed himself very clearly when that happened, but he was excellent company and had a fund of amusing and often apocryphal stories from his own life. He was a man of incredible energy and a great sense of humour. The equestrian community joins the rest of the nation, the Commonwealth and indeed the world in mourning the loss of a remarkable man, and in sending our condolences to Her Majesty and the Royal Family.