By and large I enjoy the Honours system; sharing the pleasure that the recipients enjoy (having their swimgloat, as James Lees-Milne would say) but …
But it is dispiriting to read of those who get decorated because it comes with the job, they are time-servers on the Tory back benches, they have made a shed-load in the City, or they are celebs making the awards newsworthy. Most of the recipients have done good work out of the limelight – the lollipop ladies, if you will – and I’m pleased to see them getting recognition. Sometimes it goes to a recipient’s head. I have a friend whose email address includes OBE after his name. Other more modest friends are surprised when I remember to include their gongs on an envelope.
The latest batch includes knighthoods for Nick Clegg (deserved, though I doubt his wife will want to be called Lady C), a politician known to me only for his pomposity and marital infidelity and Bristol boy, Richard Long. If you were a reader in May 2016 you will have read this about his work. He already has a CBE dangling round his neck and I’m delighted that he has this further recognition. I treated with a gallery in Notting Hill to buy a work on paper by him. It was a small but jolly expensive mud daub which would have worked on a much larger scale. I’d like to have an outdoors piece like David Cholmondeley at Houghton but I’d have to install it in the cemetery and the Friends are very fussy about such things – also it might get pinched.
The Honours system is definitely a bit bonkers. Often the Queen invests her husband, children and grand-children with gongs which seems a bit odd. On the other hand it gives the Honours currency value and makes the huge number of other recipients relish the glory of being chosen.
Before Christmas I was given a bottle of Gould Campbell 1997 Bicentenary vintage port. So often this sort of lovely present gets consigned to the cellar but this time I kept it in the kitchen and decanted it this evening. It is not a good idea to drink good port after dinner; too much stuff has already gone downstream. It is a delicious aperitif and a stimulant to blog writing. So no milk today …
Christopher – I just wanted to say how much informed pleasure I have derived from your daily musings this year. As a fellow Bristolian , I am a huge fan of Richard Long’s conceptual, somehow very English modernist work but we must differ on The Clegg who, although I believe functioned as an effective MP, had a mostly disastrous tenure as joint leader with Dave. To reward him with a gong I find baffling.
Here’s to a productive 2018!
I found the k that Mr Clegg accepted..I’m using the NYTimes dodge of downward mobility for title holders below a dukedom…a bit baffling as well. He is so well placed in the Baltic nobility that knighthood would seem a bit bushwa as Mr Damon Runyon used to put it.
For those interested in a great Honours year look no further than 1948 and George the Good and Earl Atlee at work.
Viscounts,barons by the dozen. Hundreds of Indian gongs handed to the toilers of the Raj including the Cumberbatchs of Bombay as well as some poor devil who lead the special armed constabulary in Bihar. Among Indian peers pre August 15 a bias toward Islamic rulers. Colonial police did well and aviation had its own award category. Australian pastoralists and Newfoundland…still a CC prior to joining Canada…also fetched up a few Ks thanks to Joey Smallwood.
In short one of the last ,and best,of the Imperial sunsets.