Monty Roberts, the horse trainer who became one of Queen Elizabeth’s rare private confidants, died on July 31 at 91. His death puts a new spotlight on the long friendship that began when she invited him to the U.K. in 1989 to teach his gentle methods.
That friendship lasted for years in the most ordinary way possible: by phone. Roberts said he and Queen Elizabeth shared hundreds of calls over 33 years, and that she was one of the few people who would take his call at any time. In 2023, he said that was the unusual bond that made the news after his death today feel different from the usual royal remembrance.
Roberts’s methods were gentle because they were built on reading a horse’s personality instead of forcing it into submission. He said he helped Queen Elizabeth learn how to understand a horse and make it friendly rather than treat it as a flight animal, which helps explain why a lifelong equestrian would have been drawn to him in the first place. The relationship was not ceremonial; it was practical, built around a shared interest in horses and the way they respond to trust.
The friendship also had a sharper edge. Roberts recalled calling and being told that Queen Elizabeth was stuck in a meeting with the political people of Northern Ireland. He said she later told him she was in that meeting and had been hoping for a way to get out of it, then stepped into another room to speak with him. For Roberts, that was as close as he ever came to missing a call from her in 33 years.
That detail matters because it shows how unusual his access was, even for someone outside the court. Roberts said he would take a bullet before deceiving her in any way, and that sense of trust appears to have run both ways. Queen Elizabeth and Monty Roberts stayed in touch through the rest of her life, and the relationship was still being talked about years later, including during his 2015 visit to the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace. His death closes the story on one of the queen’s most unusual friendships, but the calls he described leave the clearer answer: she did not just admire his work, she made room for him in the middle of hers.
