Hilary Mantel has been made a Dame in the Queen’s birthday honours, in recognition of her services to literature.
Twice winner of the Man Booker Prize, Mantel’s bestselling novels about Thomas Cromwell are currently appearing on stage in the West End.
She said:
I’m delighted to receive this honour…. I see it not so much as a reward for the past, more as encouragement for the future…. I hope it will please the many people who have helped, guided and encouraged me over a writing career of some 30 years.
Speaking to Erica Wagner in the New Statesman earlier this year, Mantel was characteristically firm about whether writers should chase after accolades:
Public opinion is not something that features very highly in my life. Nobody should go into a trade like writing expecting applause, or universal approval, or even popularity.
Other honour recipients on the list include Angelina Jolie, who receives an honorary damehood “for services to UK foreign policy and her work to fight sexual violence”. The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict which Jolie convened with foreign secretary William Hague has just ended in London – as Aisha Gill put it in her piece on the summit for the NS, it was a welcome attempt to stop “the female body being a battleground”.
Nicholas Soames, the Conservative MP for Mid Sussex, receives a knighthood for political services. A grandson of Winston Churchill, he told the BBC:
I have been an MP for over 30 years…. I love Parliament and I hope I have made a small contribution, alongside many others, to the public and political life of this country.
The full list of over a thousand honours is available here.
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