TAYLOR, Christopher John (1934-2025)
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Christopher Taylor, trainer and equestrian stuntman who gave Sid James betting tips
Taylor jumped hedges in The Belstone Fox and leapt from horse to wagon in Carry on Cowboy
Christopher Taylor, who has died aged 90, was a racehorse trainer, stuntman and Hussars officer whose taste for speed – literally a fast life – brought him into contact with leading figures of 1960s Hollywood.
Taylor was an equestrian stunt double on films and became friendly with the horse-mad Elizabeth Taylor. Later he was a mentor to the young Jenny Pitman, who herself went on to become a successful racing trainer, and to the dressage Olympian Carl Hester.
In his twenties, Taylor appeared the archetypal cavalry officer, debonair, charming and keen on sports cars. Behind the façade, however, was a sensitive man with innovative ideas on horse welfare. “There is a job for every horse, and if a horse has grown tired of a job, then we must find him a new job,” he asserted [….]
Christopher John Taylor was born on November 11 1934. His maternal grandfather was the 25th Lord de Clifford, who had been killed in a motoring accident when Christopher’s mother was a baby. The 26th baron, Christopher’s uncle, campaigned for speed limits and driving tests but then, through no fault of his own, caused a road death.
In 1935 he became the last man in England to be tried by his peers in the House of Lords. He was acquitted of manslaughter, but the accident haunted him and it was said he never again spoke in the House [….]
Taylor’s father Mervyn (known as Jeremy) had doubled for Peter O’Toole on camel and horseback in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Through him, Taylor found film work, riding in doublet and hose behind Richard Burton in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), in which Elizabeth Taylor insisted on being given a walk-on role to keep an eye on her philandering husband [….]
Ever courteous, with a cigarette perennially between his lips (even after a bout of pneumonia), the handsome Taylor glided through acting circles with the same easy charm he brought to racing. In the late 1960s he moved to new stables in Bourton-on-the-Hill at East Cottage, family home of his second wife, Jane “Jannie” Brown.
They married in 1972 after his first marriage ended in divorce. There, for the next 30 years, he developed a reputation for rehabilitating the halt and lame of the equine world, earning horses’ trust and restoring their confidence before selling them to new owners[….]
Tragedy struck, however, when Jannie died in a riding accident in 1995. Later that year Taylor met Sally, who became his third wife in 2009 at a wedding in Rome.
In retirement he moved to a remote, heavily wooded valley near Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire. He never gave up on horses, nor they on him. As he lay dying, his 30-year-old mare Blondie, herself frail, stood guard under his bedroom window.
Taylor is survived by his wife Sally, by a son and daughter from his first marriage, and by the loyal Blondie.
Christopher Taylor, born November 11 1934, died July 30 2025