British Library chief Keating and authors Lee, Belton and Simon receive New Year Honours

Biographer Hermione Lee, British Library chief executive Roly Keating, Putin’s People author Catherine Belton, Horrid Henry creator Francesca Simon and Diary of a Young Naturalist writer Dara McAnulty are among those to have been recognised in King Charles III’s first New Year’s Honours list.

Lee, emeritus professor of English Literature at Oxford University, and already a Dame, has been awarded the highest Order of the British Empire honour possible, a Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire, for services to English Literature. Lee is the author of a number of celebrated biographies, including Virginia Woolf (Vintage, 1997), Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life (Chatto & Windus, 2007) and Tom Stoppard: A Life (Faber & Faber, 2020). 

Meanwhile Keating receives awarded a knighthood for services to literature, alongside artist Grayson Perry, author of The Descent of Man (Allen Lane) and Playing to the Gallery (Penguin Books).

Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at King’s College, London, has also been awarded a knighthood, for services to political science. His most recent book The Strange Survival of Liberal Britain: Politics and Power Before the First World War was published by Biteback in October.

CBEs have gone to Neil Mendoza, commissioner for Cultural Recovery and Renewal, the taskforce set up to advise on how UK culture could recover after Covid-19, and Claire Whitaker, a member of the cultural recovery board, for services to arts and culture.

Awarded OBEs are professor Kimberley Griffith Reynolds, professor of children’s literature at Newcastle University, and the author of A Very Short Introduction to Children’s Literature (Oxford University Press), for services to literature, and David Sutherland, illustrator of The Beano, for services to Illustration. 

Investigative journalist Catherine Belton, whose book Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West (William Collins) became the subject of a landmark legal case after action brought by wealthy Russian businessmen, has been awarded an MBE for services to journalism; meanwhile Francesca Simon, whose Horrid Henry children’s books are published by Orion, has been awarded an MBE for services to literature.

Also awarded an MBE is Helena Whitbread, the historian and editor who first deciphered the coded diaries of 19th-century lesbian landowner Anne Lister, for services to history and to literature.

Further MBEs have gone to Stephen John Bleakley for services to libraries and to the community in Fermanagh, Omagh and Fivemiletown; Dr Edson Burton, a writer, academic and curator awarded for services to the arts and to the community in Bristol; Susan Anne Crowley, for services to public libraries and Lily Ebert, Auschwitz survivor  and co-author of Lily’s Promise: How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live (Macmillan, 2021) for services to Holocaust education.

In a separate overseas honours list compiled to recognise “extraordinary people” for their service to the UK overseas and abroad, including senior diplomats at the forefront of the UK’s response to the war in Ukraine, professor Lesley Lokko, founder and director of Africa Futures Institute in Accra, Ghana, has received an OBE for services to architecture and education. Lokko is also a novelist whose books include Soul Sisters (Macmillan, 2021), In Love and War (Orion, 2014) and One Secret Summer (Orion, 2010).

Teenage environmental activist Dara McAnulty, whose Diary of a Young Naturalist (Little Toller/Ebury Press) won the Wainwright Prize, has received a British Empire Medal for services to the environment and to people with autism spectrum disorder. Receiving the same honour are a number of librarians: Zoey Dixon, development librarian at the London Borough of Lambeth; Alan Garnsworthy, lately community library services manager, at the London Borough of Hackney; and Sylvia Knights, trustee for Suffolk Libraries.

Also recipients of British Empire Medals are Jessie Smith, author of Jessie’s Journey: Autobiography of a Traveller Girl (published by independent Scottish press Birlinn) for services to the Scottish Traveller community; Molly Watts, author of a number of books published by Nurse Dotty Books with the aim of alleviating anxiety around being admitted to hospital for children and their families, for services to literature during Covid 19; and reverend Jason Young, for services to cultural heritage and public awareness of Black British history through the creative arts. Young co-authored Volunteer Effect: How Your Church Can Find, Train, and Keep Volunteers Who Make a Difference (Baker Books, 2020) with Jonathan Malm.