CS Lewis, who with his Oxford colleague JRR Tolkien, ranks with Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle as among the best known 20th century British authors among Americans, turned both Winston Churchill and the Queen down flat, newly released British documents show.
The Order of the British Empire was established by George V originally to honor Britons who contributed to the country’s victory in World War Two. The awards come in five grades, from the highest (Knight or Dame Grand Cross) down to the lowest rank of Member. The top two tiers offer knighthoods or their female equivalent; Americans and other non-Brits are eligible for honorary memberships but don’t get to call themselves “Sir”. (Becoming an actual knight involves swearing allegiance to the current king or queen, something we Americans swore off a long time ago.)
The awards are made by the monarch on the recommendation of the government of the day. Lewis was offered the highest non-knightly grade; had he accepted he would have been known as CS Lewis, CBE.
The documents don’t give reasons for the turn down, but a number of other literary and cultural figures over the years also declined: John Lennon accepted, but returned his to protest Britain’s pro-Nigeria stance during the Biafran war.
In keeping with custom, Lewis never revealed that he had rejected the honor, and presumably would not want this known even now. [UPDATE: As reader Will Vaus points out (see comment below), after Lewis' death, his brother included in a collection of Lewis' correspondence the letter Lewis wrote graciously declining the honor because he thought it would be misunderstood. VM does not know whether CS Lewis would have wanted the letter published.] It is receiving attention now because somebody with nothing better to do pursued a freedom of information lawsuit to get the names of everyone who ever turned a royal honor down. A good constitutional royalist, Lewis would have agreed with Walter Bagehot:
…secrecy is, however, essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants; she will become one combatant among many.
Bagehot wrote in a time when there was no freedom of information act, and royal secrets could be kept without offense. How the British monarchy will survive in an age without secrets, in an age when laws require that all magic be bathed in full daylight remains to be seen.
As long as the royals serve as good cash cows I suppose the Brits will keep them around — at least, if what Brits I’ve asked about this are any guide.
An amusing and interesting note. I assume that the need to maintain the “magical” aura of the monarchy in England emerged in inverse proportion to the actual power of the monarchy, so that stripped of this final source of awe or respect or prestige, the monarchy has little more than its wealth to support it.
On the other hand, I was reminded of two great books on the subject, one you are no doubt intimately familiar with, Kantorowicz’s great classic, The King’s Two Bodies, which traces the social and cultural foundations of the mystical – magical in a more profound sense – power of medieval kings as well their political power, and a more recent study of the British monarchy by Ilse Hayden, “Ritual and Privilege: The Ritual Context of British Royalty”, in which she argues first that the monarch holds more political power (if not authority) than is normally recognized, and second, that the royal family sits at the top of a significantly large social class composed of an aristocracy and nobility, and that so long as this social class persists, the royals will enjoy a variety of social privileges and position simply by virtue of being at the apex of this social pyramid. An interesting book.
Nonetheless, it is a shame that the legal right of access to information should be used to embarrass people, or the memory of people, with no larger social good being achieved thereby.
The fact of C. S. Lewis being offered a CBE and the reason for him turning it down has long been known. In 1966 Lewis’ brother Warren published his letters. On 3 December 1951, Lewis wrote to the Prime Minister’s secretary:
“I feel greatly obliged to the Prime Minister, and so far as my personal feelings are concerned this honour would be highly agreeable. There are always however knaves who say, and fools who believe, that my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist propaganda, and my appearance in the Honours List wd. of course strengthen their hands. It is therefore better that I shd. not appear there. I am sure the Prime Minister will understand my reason, and that my gratitude is and will be none the less cordial.” (Lewis, W. H., “Letters of C. S. Lewis”, New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1966, p. 235.)
@Will Vaus: Thanks!
It isn’t often that one has to correct something WRM writes, but there is an error of historical fact in today’s column. George V could hardly have created the OBE to honour those who aided victory the Second World War since he died in 1936. So, either George V created it to honour those efforts in the First World War when he was king, or it was his son George VI who created it for the follow-on conflict.
GREAT quote:
“…secrecy is, however, essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. We must not bring the Queen into the combat of politics, or she will cease to be reverenced by all combatants; she will become one combatant among many.”
I think I shall be a Bagehotist till I die.
David Bowie turned down being knighted TWICE.
“How the British monarchy will survive in an age without secrets, in an age when laws require that all magic be bathed in full daylight remains to be seen.”
‘Bagehot’s’ modern incarnation (David Renie) just put out a piece that addresses this very question:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2012/01/british-monarchy?fsrc=gn_ep