King Charles has recognised authors and book industry experts in his first Birthday Honours list announced on the 16th June. Among those receiving top honours were authors Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Ben Okri.

McEwan joined the ranks of Quentin Blake, Melvyn Bragg, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Antonia Fraser when he was named a Companion of Honour, an award which is given to those who have made an outstanding contribution in their area and is limited to just 65 members at any one time. The recipients wear the initials CH after their name. The paperback edition of Booker Prize winner McEwan’s latest novel, Lessons is published this month. Speaking of his award McEwan said “I’m now entering my 54th year of writing fiction. As all dedicated writers know, a literary life is not a career so much as a way of being. The task in hand, the novel one is trying to create, is always there, a constant and intimate companion,”

The late Martin Amis was knighted in the Birthday Honours, with the knighthood given to him with a date of 18th May, the day before his death, as the honour cannot be bestowed posthumously. Amis published 15 novels, the last being Inside Story published in 2021.

Ben Okri also received a knighthood, for services to literature. The novelist said that for him, the main value of his honour came in the "necessity to remind my fellow human beings that we are living on a cusp of a worldwide environmental crisis". His latest book Tiger Work is inspired by environmental activism "blending poetry and prose, fiction and essay, realism and magic in his quintessentially brilliant style, Ben Okri’s Tiger Work is a powerful, passionate polemic for change. Global in scope, timeless and timely, the anthology showcases two poems, six works of prose, and three short stories, along with an essay and a letter to the earth". You can read our review of Tiger Work here.

Other awards to those in the book industry went to publisher Anthony Cheetham, co-founder of Orion and founder of Head of Zeus, who was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to literature; so too was historian and author William Dalrymple, for services to literature and the arts. Penguin publisher Stuart Proffitt received an OBE.

MBEs went to Diana Gerald, chief executive of BookTrust, poet and playwright Inua Ellams, broadcaster and author Sally Magnusson (for services to people with dementia and their carers), Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood, co-founders and editors of literary magazine Slightly Foxed and Christine Myhill, libraries and heritage manager at Gateshead Libraries and chair of the Association of Senior Children’s & Education Librarians (ASCEL).

Broadcaster Davina McCall, whose book Menopausing, co-authored with Dr Naomi Potter, was named Book of the Year at the Nibbies in May, also received an MBE.

British Empire Medals went to Anthony Ellis, co-founder of King’s Lynn Literature Festivals and to Karolynne Hart, cultural and arts programme manager for Gateshead Libraries. 

#BirthdayHonours

@RoyalFamily