Honour bound

The inanity of minuting these conversations! The madness of putting on paper derogatory remarks about such very distinguished people! These were among the chief exclamations made at the Christmas party held by the Department of Constitutional Affairs, where much of the conversation concerned the leak of a paper in which the merits and demerits of 38 candidates for honours were ruled upon with extraordinary frankness by a committee of top civil servants, including the great Sir Hayden Phillips (profiled in this magazine on 16 August).

People’s reputations were assessed in this Cabinet Office paper, which was meant to remain secret for ever, in a wonderfully dismissive way, as if they were being considered for membership of an old and self-satisfied London club with a very long waiting list, which in a way they were. It was noted that John Taylor was ‘very promising when he moved from Hewlett-Packard, but that promise had not been altogether fulfilled’ in his role as director-general of UK research councils, while Christopher Allsopp, an economist who served on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, was ‘not thought to be a strong candidate’, for his work ‘was of questionable quality’. Professor Colin Blakemore’s ‘controversial work on vivisection’ meant he could not be given an honour now, though some hope was held out that ‘his reputation might be improved’ in his new job at the Medical Research Council. In sport, ‘the committee noted that all of the OBE candidates were over 50’, and decided, in a much-mocked phrase, that the tennis player Tim Henman ‘should be taken now to add interest to the list’.

Seldom has the modern British establishment been so well exposed in all its glorious timidity and conformity. But the most riveting remarks, from Grub Street’s point of view, were found in the section devoted to the media, where the committee in its wisdom ruled:

It was agreed that of the two potential K/D [Knight/Dame] candidates, Patricia Hodgson [chief executive of the Independent Television Council] was the stronger and should be taken.