LONDON: Rock singer Rod Stewart and Queen Elizabeth II's granddaughter, Zara
Phillips, are among those honoured by Britain's monarch in her traditional
New Year honours list published yesterday.

Phillips becomes an MBE (Member of the British Empire) after winning the
equestrian world and European championships earlier this year, as well as
the much-coveted BBC sports personality of the year award a few weeks ago.

The 11th in line to the throne and daughter of Princess Anne becomes the
most senior royal to be recognised in the list.

Meanwhile Stewart, known for his gravelly voice and hits such as Maggie May
and Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?, receives the more prestigious CBE (Commander of
the British Empire).

He is the latest in a recent string of pop stars to receive honours from the
queen, though his gong is lower down the pecking order than the knighthoods
given to Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney.

Jazz pianist George Shearing and writer Michael Holroyd joined the knights
of the realm in the list, while lesser honours were bestowed on actress
Penelope Keith and writers Alexander McCall Smith and Colin Thubron.

Inventor James Dyson, famed for his vacuum cleaner, receives a knighthood.

Shearing, 87, a London native who was born blind, led the George Shearing
Quintet and other notable combos in the 1950s and 1960s. He has entertained
Queen Elizabeth II and was invited to play for US presidents Gerald Ford,
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Lullaby of Birdland, one of his 300
compositions, has become a jazz standard.

Since 1947, Shearing has based his career in the US, although in later life
he divided his time between homes in England and New York.

Holroyd, 71, has established a stellar literary reputation with a
five-volume biography of George Bernard Shaw, two volumes on the writer
Lytton Strachey - best known as the author of Eminent Victorians - and a
two-volume set on the painter Augustus John.

Keith, Stewart, McCall Smith and Thubron were honoured as CBE, as was John
Rutter, the distinguished composer of church music.

Keith, 66, starred as Margot Ledbetter from 1975 to 1978 in the BBC TV
series The Good Life - known in the US as Good Neighbors - and as Audrey
Fforbes-Hamilton in To the Manor Born from 1979 to 1981.

McCall Smith, 58, a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University, has
produced a string of best-selling novels including The No. 1 Ladies
Detective Agency published in 1998, which introduced the character of
Precious Ramotswe, a wise and "traditionally built" woman of Botswana.

Thubron, 67, is a travel writer whose titles include Mirror to Damascus,
Hills of Adonis, and In Siberia. He has also published half a dozen novels.

Rutter, 61, made an early mark as a composer of Christmas music with The
Shepherd's Pipe Carol, written when he was 18 and published while he was a
university student. He went on to co-edit the Carols for Choirs series with
Sir David Willcocks for Oxford University Press.

Hugh Laurie, 48, who stars as Dr Gregory House in the TV series House, was
awarded the OBE. Laurie also shone in an entirely different role as Bertie
Wooster in the early 1990s TV comedies Jeeves and Wooster, based on P G
Wodehouse's stories.

As usual, the list was heavily laced with civil servants, but there were
some who worked far away from the corridors of power - such as Scottish
milkman George Bell, 60, who retired in August after delivering milk for 34
years in the village of Gullane.

Recipients of honours are nominated by government departments, private
sector organisations and individuals, and decisions are made by committees
within the Cabinet Office.

This year, the government has introduced a buttonhole badge that honorees
can wear.

Some 120,000 are eligible to wear the badge, according to the Cabinet
Office, but they will have to pay £15 (BD11) to buy one.



Rach

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