Order of the Companions of Honour

The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded in June 1917 by King George V as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry, and religion. It is sometimes regarded as the junior order to the Order of Merit.

Composition

The order consists of the Sovereign plus no more than 65 members. Additionally, foreigners from outside the realms may be added as honorary members. Membership confers no title or precedence, but those inducted into the single-class order are entitled to use the post-nominal letters CH. Appointments can be made on the advice of Commonwealth realm prime ministers. For Canadians, the advice to the Sovereign can come from a variety of officials.

Originally, the order was limited to 50 ordinary members, but in 1943 it was enlarged to 65, with a quota of 45 members for the United Kingdom, seven for Australia, two each for New Zealand and South Africa, and 9 for India, Burma, and the colonies. The quota numbers were altered in 1970 to 47 for the United Kingdom, 7 for Australia, 2 for New Zealand, and 9 for other Commonwealth realms. The quota was adjusted again in 1975 by adding 2 places to the New Zealand quota and reducing the 9 for the other countries to 7.

Maggie Smith

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, CH, DBE (born 28 December 1934) is an English actress. She made her stage debut in 1952 and has had an extensive, varied career in stage, film and television spanning over sixty years. Smith has appeared in over 50 films and is one of Britain's most recognisable actresses. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 1990 New Year Honours for services to the performing arts, and Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to drama.

Smith began her career on stage at the Oxford Playhouse in 1952 and made her Broadway debut in New Faces of '56. For her work on the London stage, she has won a record five Best Actress Evening Standard Awards; for The Private Ear and The Public Eye (1962), Hedda Gabler (1970), Virginia (1981), The Way of the World (1984) and Three Tall Women (1994). In New York, she received Tony Award nominations for Private Lives (1975) and Night and Day (1979), before winning the 1990 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Lettice and Lovage. Other stage roles include Stratford Shakespeare Festival productions of Antony And Cleopatra (1976) and Macbeth (1978), and West End productions of A Delicate Balance (1997) and The Breath of Life (2002).

John Major

Sir John Major, KG, CH, PC (born 29 March 1943) is a British Conservative Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Foreign Secretary in the Thatcher Government and was the Member of Parliament for Huntingdon from 1979 to 2001.

Within weeks of becoming Prime Minister, Major presided over British participation in the Gulf War in March 1991 and negotiated the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991. He went on to lead the Conservatives to a fourth consecutive election victory, winning the most votes in British electoral history with over 14 million in the 1992 general election, with a reduced majority in the House of Commons. Shortly after this, the Major Government became responsible for the United Kingdom's exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after Black Wednesday on 16 September 1992. This event led to a loss of confidence in Conservative economic policies and from thereon in he was never able to achieve a lead in the opinion polls again.

Rod Stewart

Roderick David "Rod" Stewart, CBE (born 10 January 1945) is a British rock singer-songwriter. Born and raised in London, he is of Scottish and English ancestry. Stewart is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 100 million records worldwide.

He has had six consecutive number one albums in the UK, and his tally of 62 UK hit singles includes 31 that reached the top 10, six of which gained the number one position. He has had 16 top ten singles in the US, with four reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2007, he received a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music.

With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s with The Jeff Beck Group and then with Faces, though his music career had begun in 1962 when he took up busking with a harmonica. In October 1963 he joined the Dimensions as a harmonica player and part-time vocalist, then in 1964 he joined Long John Baldry and the All Stars. Later, in August 1964, he also signed a solo contract, releasing his first solo single, "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", in October of the same year. He maintained a solo career alongside a group career, releasing his debut solo album An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down (US: The Rod Stewart Album), in 1969. His early albums were a fusion of rock, folk music, soul music and R&B. His aggressive blues work with The Jeff Beck Group and the Faces influenced heavy metal genres. From the late 1970s through the 1990s, Stewart's music often took on a new wave or soft rock/middle-of-the-road quality, and in the early 2000s he released a series of successful albums interpreting the Great American Songbook.