IN BRITAIN, A PARTIAL LIST OF THOSE WHO DECLINED TO BE CALLED ‘SIR’
By SARAH LYALL
The New York Times
January 27, 2012 Friday
Late Edition – Final
LONDON — Which is cooler: To accept a knighthood from the queen,
or to turn one down?
In what the BBC is calling the “alternative honors list,” the British
government on Friday released the names of 277 people — actors,
writers, musicians, politicians, scientists and others — who for
reasons known mostly to themselves rejected the rarefied opportunity
to become knights, dames and the like between 1951 and 1999.
Included are Roald Dahl, who did not want to receive the Order of
the British Empire, or O.B.E., in 1986; Graham Greene, who did not
want to be a Commander of the British Empire, or C.B.E., in 1956;
and Aldous Huxley, who turned down a knighthood in 1959.
The list, released only after repeated Freedom of Information requests
by the BBC, includes only dead nonrecipients and leaves it anyone’s
guess as to why they declined their awards. But people who turned
down awards in the past have given their reasons as, variously,
not believing in the monarchy; not liking the system’s links to the
British Empire, when there is no British Empire anymore; being miffed
that the honor they are being offered is one of the lower-level ones;
and feeling generally opposed to the elitism of the whole thing.
“Surely, there is something unlikable about a person, when old,
accepting honors from a institution she attacked when young?” wrote the
author Doris Lessing in 1992, turning down the chance to be a dame of
what she called the “nonexistent empire” (she accepted another title,
the Companion of Honor, in 2000, saying she liked that “you’re not
called anything” special.) In 2003, J. G. Ballard said he did not
want a C.B.E. because the whole thing was a “preposterous charade.”
Offered an O.B.E. by Tony Blair’s government in 2003, the poet Benjamin
Zephaniah responded, “Stick it, Mr. Blair and Mrs. Queen.”
David Bowie said no to a C.B.E. in 2000 because, he explained, “I
seriously don’t know what it’s for.” And the filmmaker and pugnaciously
rich restaurant critic Michael Winner upset janitors across the land
in 2006 when he dismissed the honor he was offered, the not-so-grand
O.B.E, as the kind of thing “you get if you clean toilets well.”
Alfred Hitchcock turned down a C.B.E. in 1962, but perhaps he was
angling for something better — he was later made a Knight Commander
of the British Empire.
Honors are granted by the queen from a list presented by the government
of the day after an opaque and mysterious process. Several years
ago, the news anchor Jon Snow said in an interview, he received a
government letter asking him whether he wanted an O.B.E and inviting
him to check a box, yes or no.
Mr. Snow checked the “No” box because, he said, working journalists
should not accept honors from the government. “I tried to find out
why I’d been given it and was unable to get a clear answer or, indeed,
to find out who had proposed me,” he said.
But Mr. Snow is in good company, judging from the list. Others on it
are the rich Armenian-born businessman and philanthropist Calouste
Sarkis Gulbenkian (no knighthood, 1951); the journalist Hugh Cudlipp
(no knighthood, 1966); the scientist Francis Crick, (no C.B.E. in 1963,
though he did accept a Nobel Prize in 1966); and the artist L.
S. Lowry, who declined five honors over the years, apparently setting
an honor-rejecting record.
The artist Lucian Freud did not want a C.B.E. in 1977. The actor
Trevor Howard, star of “Brief Encounter,” did not want one in 1982,
and the writer Evelyn Waugh did not want one in 1959. Meanwhile,
Audrey Callaghan, wife of Prime Minister Jim Callaghan, did not want
to be a dame in 1979.
Then there is a whole other class of people, not included on the
list, who accepted honors, only to return them later. While Sir
Paul McCartney appears to be happy in his knighthood, his bandmate
John Lennon was not so relaxed about his own honor, a Member of the
British Empire.
He gave it back in 1969, along with a note to the queen saying he was
protesting Britain’s involvement in “the Nigeria-Biafra thing,” the
country’s support of America in the Vietnam War and ” ‘Cold Turkey’
slipping down in the charts,” a reference to the song he wrote for the
Plastic Ono Band after he and Yoko Ono decided to stop taking heroin.
In a possible homage to his recently created series of lithographs,
The Bag One Portfolio, and on stationery from his newly set up Bag
Productions, Lennon signed his letter to the queen using a title he
awarded to himself: “Sir John of Bag.”