Born in Queensbury, West Yorkshire, Horner was a neat, dapper batsman, who formed a powerful opening partnership with Fred Gardner, and scored a thousand runs in every season up to 1964.
He went down the order in 1958, when the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) asked Warwickshire to promote Smith to develop him for a possible England opening spot.
On a flat Oval pitch in 1960 he scored a career-best 203 not out, and put on 377 with Billy Ibadulla for the first wicket on the first day, then the highest unbroken opening partnership in cricket history.
He retired in 1965 to concentrate on landscape gardening and his work as a cricket groundsman.
This biographical article related to an English cricket person born in the 1920s is a stub.