THE BIRTHDAY HONOURS list ran true to recent depressing form.
Some faithful party supporters were rewarded for conspicuous mediocrity. A famous actor became a knight, and a famous foot- baller was awarded a CBE; association football has still to attain the respectability of the stage or of cricket. Mr. J. B. T. Cowan received the MBE, by a process which the Guardian has charitably called 'administrative ineptitude'—a term which is also applicable in the case of two recipients of the BEM, who were found to have been dead for six months. Recipients of well-deserved honours (such as the Provost of Worcester, often a con- tributor to the Spectator) may be forgiven if, looking at the list, they are uneasy about the com- pany in which they find themselves. I am always sorry, too, to find the names of journalists who have accepted honours. The tradition which Delane helped to establish, that journalists take neither honours nor titles, has never been abso- lute: journalists in the provinces have been exempted, as if to compensate them for their exile from Fleet Street; and occasionally the rule was broken in Fleet Street itself. But recently it has become a more common practice. To my mind it is an unfortunate one. There are far too many insidious connections between the press and the State as it is, without the lure of a decoration or a handle being added to them.
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