All celebs who have turned down royal honours as New Year's awards revealed
Over the years, numerous people have turned down royal honours, something that always finds renewed interest when the new batch of New Year’s awards are announced.
The celebrities to receive royal awards this year are a fairly uncontroversially beloved bunch, with Idris Elba and multiple members of the Lionesses being the headline inclusions.
Elba, now Sir Idris Elba, was knighted, whilst England captain Leah Williamson became a CBE. Alex Greenwood, Keira Walsh, Georgia Stanway, and Ella Toone all became MBEs.
Paula Radcliffe, Richard Osman, Warwick Davis, and Gabby Logan were all also given OBEs
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Whilst all the above celebs accepted the royal honours, not everybody has such a positive view of receiving them, and multiple people have turned them down over the years.
David Bowie
Neither Ziggy Stardust nor David Bowie ever accepted honours from the Royal Family, despite having been offered twice.
In 2000 he was offered a CBE and in 2003 a knighthood, but he turned them both down.
He said when asked about why: “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for..”
Michael Sheen
The famous Welsh actor is an interesting case because while he initially accepted royal Honours, he later returned them.
After being made an OBE in 2009, he returned it in 2017. He made the realisation that he needed to do so whilst working on a lecture about the ‘tortured history’ between England and Wales, particularly the fact the title ‘Prince of Wales’ is given by an English monarch to their son.
He said in an interview with Owen Jones: “By the time I’d finished writing that lecture, I remember sitting there going: ‘Well, I have a choice. I either don’t give this lecture and hold on to my OBE or I give this lecture and I have to give my OBE back’”.
Nigella Lawson
Lawson gave a quite simple answer when asked why she turned down an OBE in 2011.
She said: “I'm not saving lives and I'm not doing anything other than something I absolutely love."
The food writer has not been offered the award since.
Benjamin Zephaniah
For those who know the work of the late legendary writer and poet, the surprise shouldn’t be that Benjamin Zephaniah turned it down, but that someone thought he’d accept it.
Writing in The Guardian he said: “Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought. I get angry when I hear that word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised."
“I am not one of those who are obsessed with their roots, and I'm certainly not suffering from a crisis of identity; my obsession is about the future and the political rights of all people. Benjamin Zephaniah OBE - no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire”.
John Lennon and George Harrison
The scouse duo have both returned or turned down royal honours over the years.
The Beatles were all sent MBEs in 1965, with Lennon sending it back four years later with the message: “Your Majesty, I am returning this in protest against Britain's involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam, and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With Love, John Lennon of Bag”.
Whilst George Harrison was offered an OBE in 2000 he rejected it, with his friend Roy Connolly hinting that Paul McCartney becoming a Sir three years prior might have played a role. He said: “Whoever it was who decided to offer him the OBE and not the knighthood was extraordinarily insensitive.
“George would have felt insulted – and with very good reason”.
Virginia Woolf
The beloved writer turned down royal honours in 1933, writing in her diary: “I don’t take honours.”
This fell in line with her general views on them, as she stated in her book Three Guineas that women should not accept them from patriarchal power structures.
She wrote: “...if we are offered offices and honours for ourselves we can refuse them — how, indeed, in view of the facts, could we possibly do otherwise?”
Other famous names to turn down honours include:
- Danny Boyle
- Peter O’Toole
- French and Saunders
- Rudyard Kipling
- Stephen Hawking
- Paul Weller
- Danny Boyle
- Joseph Conrad
- Bernie Ecclestone
- C.S. Lewis
Topics: David Bowie, UK News, Royal Family, Celebrity
Michael Slavin