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Sadiq Khan and Stephen Fry received knighthoods along with the former England manager Gareth Southgate while Emily Thornberry became a dame in the first new year honours list since Labour’s general election win.
The mayor of London, who secured a record third term in City Hall this May, said he was “truly humbled” by the honour. Fry, who first made his name as one half of a double act with Hugh Laurie in the late 1980s, said he had felt “startled and enchanted” on receiving the news.
Fry, 67, a celebrated author and actor who is the president of Mind and vice-president of the conservation charity Fauna & Flora International, was given the award for his services to mental health awareness.
He said: “When you are recognised it does make you feel a bit ‘crikey’, but I think the most emotional thing is that when I think of my childhood, and my dreadful unhappiness and misery and stupidity, and everything that led to so many failures as a child. And for my parents, really, what a disaster. I mean every time the phone rang, they thought: ‘Oh, God, what has Stephen done now?’ It was a sort of joke in the family.”
Southgate, 54, who resigned after leading England’s men’s team to the finals of Euro 2020 and 2024 and the semi-final of the 2018 World Cup, was honoured for services to association football.
Thornberry, who had been a surprise omission from Keir Starmer’s first cabinet after holding the role of shadow attorney general in opposition, described herself as “both honoured and surprised” by her appointment as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
She said: “I think of my grandmothers, neither of whom were even allowed to work as married women, and think how utterly delighted they’d be to see this. My husband was knighted a few years ago and I never felt comfortable sharing his title, calling myself ‘Lady Nugee’, but Dame Emily is a name I’d be proud to go by.”
Thornberry, 64, is joined in becoming a dame by the actor Carmen Munroe, 92, one of the founders of Talawa, the UK’s leading black theatre company, and the former Labour health secretary Patricia Hewitt.
Hewitt, 74, who is the chair of the NHS Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Health Board, apologised in 2014 over links between the National Council for Civil Liberties, of which she was general secretary in the 1970s, and the Paedophile Information Exchange.
She was also suspended from the parliamentary Labour party in 2010 along with Geoff Hoon and Stephen Byers over a lobbying scandal. A cross-party committee subsequently cleared Hewitt of breaching the code of conduct but found she was “unwise” to agree to meet what she thought were representatives from a lobbying firm.
The author and screenwriter Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, 70, who was knighted in 2019, is made a member of the order of the companions of honour of which there are only 65 at any time.
The children’s writer Dame Jacqueline Wilson, 79, whose celebrated works include The Story of Tracy Beaker, was given the highest ranking OBE, known as the Dame Grand Cross, for services to literature. Prof Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the former chair of Cancer Research UK, was given a Knight Grand Cross.
There were knighthoods too for the former Conservative education minister Nick Gibb, 64, and Loyd Grossman, the former BBC broadcaster who today chairs the Royal Parks charity.
Grossman, 74, who presented the BBC’s MasterChef in the 1990s and the ITV panel show Through The Keyhole with Sir David Frost from 1987 until 2003, said he was “utterly thrilled” and “as close to speechless” as he could get.
Andy Street, 61, who was the first mayor of the West Midlands until he lost the summer election, also becomes a knight as does Ranil Jayawardena, 38, who served briefly as environment secretary under Liz Truss, along with the former Conservative deputy chief whip Marcus Jones, 50.
Rumour of a knighthood for Khan, the son of a London bus driver, had prompted more than 200,000 people to sign a petition set up by a Conservative councillor in opposition to it, but he was one of 30 Labour and Tory politicians to receive an honour.
Khan, 54, said: “I couldn’t have dreamed when growing up on a council estate in south London that I would one day be mayor of London. It’s the honour of my life to serve the city I love and I will continue to build the fairer, safer, greener and more prosperous London that all of the capital’s communities deserve.”
The novelist Robert Harris and the former Coronation Street and Happy Valley actor Sarah Lancashire become Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) as does the Bafta winning actor Carey Mulligan, 39, and the television presenter Alan Titchmarsh. “It’s an unexpected delight,” said Lancashire, 60.
The actor Eddie Marsan, 56, and the former Inspector Morse star Kevin Whately, 73, were made Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
The BBC radio presenter and DJ Steve Lamacq, 60, said being made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) was a “terrible shock”.
Myleene Klass, 46, a musician and TV presenter who is an ambassador for Tommy’s baby charity, said she was “absolutely over the moon” after being awarded an MBE for services to women’s health and miscarriage awareness.
Famous sporting heroes to be honoured with MBEs include the former Liverpool player and BBC presenter Alan Hansen, 69. The former Everton, Manchester United and West Ham manager David Moyes, 61, was made an OBE.
A host of stars of the Paris Olympics and paralympics, including Keely Hodgkinson, 22, who was given an MBE after her gold in the 800m final, were also among the 1,203 recipients of honours.
