In The Queen's Name

In days of old, the King's whim formed the country's reward: he gave to favored friends a forest, a few hundred serfs and an earldom. The very titles of prized orders (e.g., Knights of the Garter) reflected the cozy household nature of it all. Last week Queen Elizabeth published her Birthday Honors List, rewarding 2,000 British and Commonwealth subjects, but the choice was largely the concern of her elected ministers, who operate on the principle that what is good for the nation is good for the Queen's list. Only in the arts is the carefree caprice of the royal prerogative sometimes to be seen. The caprices made the headlines, but the top honors went to the most staunchly established pillars of a solvent society: P:Baronies (with the right to be addressed as "Lord") went to Unilever Board Chairman Sir Geoffrey Heyworth, ex-M.P. and Bank Director Ralph Assheton, Merchant Malcolm S. McCorquodale and World Court Judge Sir Arnold Duncan McNair. P:Knighthoods (and the right to be addressed as "Sir") went to the British West Indies' onetime rabble-rousing Labor Leader William Alexander Bustamante, who used to cock a snook at Crown and Empire, to a covey of retired generals and admirals, and to a solid phalanx of businessmen.

P:The Order of the British Empire (with the rank of Commander and the right to put the letters C.B.E. after their name) went to Miler Roger Bannister, 26 (see MILESTONES), and to Stage & Screen Star Alec Guinness, 41.

P:The Companion of Honor went to Sculptor Henry Moore.

P:The British Empire Medal was awarded to James Philip Bullen, chief officer in Her Majesty's Prison at Edinburgh, to Alfred Chalk, Inspector of Flushing for the London County Council, and to some 300 other similarly deserving subjects.

In a list carefully weighed and balanced to avoid any unwonted partisanship, ardent Laborites, faithful aides of Prime Ministers Churchill and Eden (including five members of Churchill's secretariat), and deserving politicians in the dominions beyond the seas were all duly remembered by Her Majesty. Only Roger Bannister's name really caught the public fancy in a list largely devoted to bureaucrats rewarded and diplomats given titles appropriate to their jobs.

But in neighborhood streets, or in overseas dominions (which accounted for nearly half of the Knighthoods), there were flashes of individual pride and pleasure as the list was published. Of all "the incongruous duties which our Constitution imposes upon the Prime Minister," mourned Herbert Henry Asquith more than a quarter of a century ago, "there is none, in my experience, more thankless, more irksome and more invidious than the recommendation of honors to the Crown."

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