Queen’s Birthday Honours List - RSC actress Janet Suzman made a dame

Published: 16 June 2011
by DAN CARRIER

IT “added to the gaiety of a rather nice day,” said Hampstead actress Janet Suzman, describing her reaction to being told she is to become a dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

She has played just about every female role in Shakespeare’s canon and since her appearance in 1973 she been recognised as the finest Cleopatra ever to perform for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She moved to Britain in 1959, leaving her home country of South Africa, which was then divided by apartheid.

“The current debate over immigration is just so silly,” Dame Janet told the New Journal. “It is so clear that immigration benefits the receiving country – that is how the world wags. 

“To moan about immigration is living in ­never-never land. There is simply no such thing as pure nationalities. We are all a mix of thousands of years of people moving from one place to another .”

Also honoured in the list is the director the National Portrait Gal­lery, Sandy Nairne, who is awarded a CBE.

While his day job is to look after the nation’s stock of priceless portraits, he has also found the time over the years to help organise a street party for the road he lives on in Kentish Town.

Mr Nairne said: “The letter came marked from the Cabinet Office, so I knew it wasn’t a gas bill.

“We have seen large changes in how we think about portraits, but at the heart of this is the fact we still think about individuals and their effects on the world, and feature people in such fields as scientists, reformers, artists. 

“The fact is, through the rise of photography, there are new ways of doing this, but the idea is still the same.”

Sheila Daley is awarded an MBE for her crucial role in the education of thousands of people in Camden.

The lecturer and education administrator is a driving force behind Westminster Kingsway College, and has worked there since 1987. As well as teaching, Ms Daley was the Gray’s Inn Road college’s clerk during the time it was demolished and rebuilt. 

Her MBE is awarded for her services to further education.

Law professor Jeffrey Jowell has been given the title “Knight Commander of St Michael and St George”. The Hampstead-based QC said: “When the Queen has placed a sword on my shoulder, we’ll throw a little party.”

His CV includes helping craft the new South African constitution, being the inaugural director of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and sitting on the Venice Commission that studied democracy. He has acted on behalf of British dependencies such as Jersey across the European Union.

Mr Jowell also served as a lawyer for the last remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe, who had had their farms confiscated by Robert Mugabe. 

Hampstead resident Peter Pullen has been awarded an MBE for services to the deaf, deafened and hard of hearing. 

Mr Pullen, who is partially deaf himself, spent more than a decade working to improve provision for the deaf in ­theatres after his own frustration at missing out on “some of the best ­theatre in the world”.

“We wanted access to all of this city’s wonderful theatre,” he said. “You had to read a script before you went to see the play. But who wants to read the script of Mousetrap and then go and see it? If it was a murder mystery, I’d leave not knowing who the murderer was. It was pointless.”

Stagetext, the charity co-founded by Mr Pullen, provides captioning for theatres, allowing the deaf and hard of hearing to enjoy a play through a discreet onstage screen relaying live what the actors are saying. 

Other Camden residents who were recognised with honours include Helen Alexander, the president of the Confederation of British Industry who lives in Camden Town, who receives a CBE, government lawyer George Thomson, and Patricia Blazeley, a Samaritans volunteer. Both live in West Hampstead and are made MBEs.

Nicholas Robertson, co-founder of online clothing company Asos, who works in Mornington Crescent, has been awarded an OBE for services to the fashion industry.

Photographer Sam Taylor-Wood, based in Fitzrovia, was given an OBE.