The U.K.'s New Year's Honors List has been announced. Apart from the fact that more women than men have been honored for the first time ever, it is notable for some worthy ladies and gentlemen of the arts. A good batch in the main, this year.
Wonderful to see a knighthood for Michael Codron, that senior doyen of theater producers who brought to our attention every playwright of a certain vintage that we have ever heard of (more or less). Among his stable of great writers, Alan Ayckbourn, Simon Grey, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard, Mark Ravenhill, Alan Bennett, you name them. Codron retired from producing this year (though he still manages the West End's Aldwych Theatre), so the gong is well-timed.
A knighthood, too, for sculptor Antony Gormley, whose towering, enigmatic Angel of the North has adorned many a train journey up north. Sir Simon Rattle perhaps gets a further incentive to return home, as rumor has it, to the London Symphony Orchestra after he finishes at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic, by being appointed to the hugely prestigious Order of Merit (also incidentally, this year joined by music-loving heart surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub). Another enormously coveted appointment is the CH, Companion of Honour, which goes to composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.
Gillian Lynne, the era-defining choreographer still best-loved for her work on Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, is made a Dame. Beloved actresses Angela Lansbury and Penelope Keith also received the honorific.
Director Dominic Cooke, formerly artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre, gets a CBE. And the same goes to much-admired, hitherto undersung opera director John Copley. Actor Michael Crawford gets a CBE as well, for his charitable work. A CBE also for Royal Ballet star Carlos Acosta.
Another important figure in the West End producing world, Nicholas Allott, gets honored with an OBE (Allott has long been one of Sir Cameron Mackintosh's right-hand men, a vital cog in Mackintosh's globe-conquering march). Music critic and writer Paul Griffiths is similarly honored, as (perhaps more controversially to, well, music critics) Katherine Jenkins. Another OBE goes to hit children's writer Anthony Horowitz, comedienne Sandi Toksvig and, in a lovely touch, the restaurateur Jeremy King gets his for "voluntary services to the arts," as well as his famous restaurants (which include the Wolesley and previously the Ivy)--this will delight King, who is extremely proud that his restaurants are popular among performers and sees his role sometimes as setting the scene for some great artistic matchmaking.
