Queen’s New Year Honours 2022: All those honoured in Cambridgeshire as William Russell is knighted
South Cambridgeshire resident and former Lord Mayor William Russell has been knighted in the Queen’s 2022 New Year’s Honours.
Mr Russell, who lives in Thriplow, has been made a Knights Bachelor in the 2022 New Year’s Honours for services to financial innovation, culture and wellbeing in the City of London, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mr Russell, who became the 692nd Lord Mayor of the City of London, has lived in the village since 1997.
His is one of 17 Cambridgeshire people honoured in the list - and 20 connected to the county - including representatives of business, education and health. Below we detail them all.
Nationally, champions from across the world of sport lead the list 2022, with honours for Olympians, Paralympians and those working tirelessly at grassroots level.
Married Olympians Laura and Jason Kenny receive a damehood and knighthood in the same honours list, for services to cycling. Across the List, 78 Olympians and Paralympians have been honoured for their services to sport.
Outside of accolades for Tokyo 2020, Emma Radacanu receives an MBE following her incredible US Open win and Chelsea Women's manager Emma Hayes receives an OBE for her work promoting women’s football. Sheila Parker, the first captain of the England Women Football Team, is given an MBE for services to football and charity. There is also an OBE for six time World Championship winning superbike racer Jonathan Rea.
Recognising their leadership battling Covid-19, knighthoods go to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England Professor Chris Whitty, CMO for Scotland Gregor Smith and CMO for Wales Frank Atherton. Also recognised are Chief Government Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance, and Deputy Medical Officers for England Dr Jenny Harries and Professor Jonathan Van-Tam.
Damehoods are given to actresses Joanna Lumley and Vanessa Redgrave for their services to drama, entertainment and charity while receiving OBEs are veteran soap stars June Brown and William Roache.
Here are full details of all the Cambridgeshire people honoured in the New Year’s Honours 2021.
KNIGHTS BACHELOR
William Russell has been knighted for services to financial innovation, culture and wellbeing in the City of London particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Father-of-four Mr Russell, who lives in Thriplow with his wife Hilary, has more than 30 years’ experience in the financial and business sector, including holding senior positions in national and international banking.
In November 2019, Mr Russell became the 692nd Lord Mayor of the City of London. To ensure continuity of leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic, he served a second term and remained in office until November 2021.
Read more about William Russell’s honour here.
Also knighted is Dr Douglas Oakervee CBE for services to transport and infrastructure delivery.
Dr Oakervee, who lives in Newmarket, has made an outstanding contribution to engineering globally, and was responsible for the design, procurement, construction and commissioning of Hong Kong International Airport. In 2003, he was installed as The Institution of Civil Engineers’ 139th president.
Dr Oakervee has been involved in rail infrastructure since 1975, with a wide portfolio of projects including Hong Kong Mass Rapid Transit, London Underground, Crossrail and High Speed 2.
He recently undertook an independent review of the High Speed 2 project under the Prime Minister’s invitation. The Prime Minister accepted the report, which was assembled in four months, recommending that HS2 should proceed.
He was appointed chair of HS2 Ltd in 2012 where he led the business case and hybrid bill preparation
for phase one of the HS2 project and in 2013 deposited the biggest hybrid bill ever, and
in an electronic format, a first for Parliament.
In 2020 Dr Oakervee took on the Presidency of the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers, the world’s oldest engineering society. During lockdown he arranged debates on engineering issues of the day.
Since 2017 he has been chair of the Executive Group for Leeds University’s Institute for High Speed Rail and System Integration.
Billionaire hedge fund founder David Winton Harding is knighted for services to philanthropy.
A Cambridge physics graduate, and CEO of Winton Group, his philanthropy has included a £100m donation to the University of Cambridge, which was the largest ever donation by a British citizen to a university.
He endowed the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at the university’s Faculty of Mathematics and established a research programme into the physics of sustainability at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.
Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner pointed to his donations to the Conservative party, which have amounted to nearly £1.5million, saying the knighthood showed the Tories had the “wrong priorities”.
But Prof David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre, tweeted: “Delighted to see David Harding get a knighthood today. As part of his philanthropy, he supported me as Winton Prof (2007-2019) and the Winton Centre (2016-). He changed my life, and has done so much for the public communication of stats, risk and evidence.”
ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
One of Britain’s most decorated cyclists and one of the country’s foremost Paralympic athletes, Jody Cundy OBE, has been awarded a CBE.
His selection for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics marked the seventh Games for the athlete, who started his elite sporting career by representing Great Britain in swimming at three Paralympics from 1996 to 2004.
The 43-year-old, who is based in Manchester but was born in Wisbech, picks up the honour for services to cycling.
Jody was born with a deformed right foot that was amputated when he was three years old. He started his sporting life in the pool, winning 23 international medals, 14 of them gold, in a 10-year swimming career before switching to cycling in 2006.
He has represented Great Britain and won medals at the Paralympic Games in 2008, 2012 and 2016 in the C4 category. Jody has five Paralympic medals to his name, along with 22 UCI Para-cycling Track World Championship medals.
In 2012, Jody was recognised by Anglia Ruskin University who awarded him an honorary doctorate in a ceremony at the Cambridge Corn Exchange.
Professor James Diggle has expressed his pleasure at being awarded a CBE.
Emeritus professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Cambridge and fellow of Queens’ College, Prof Diggle has been honoured for his services to classical scholarship.
He said: “My pleasure in receiving this honour will, I hope, be shared by Queens’ College and the Faculty of Classics, both of which I have been closely associated with throughout the whole of my career, and also by Cambridge University Press, which has just published the Greek Lexicon on which I worked as editor for over 20 years.”
In May, the most innovative new dictionary of Ancient Greek in almost 200 years, the Cambridge Greek Lexicon, was published by Cambridge University Press.
It was the result of 23 years’ work by a team from the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge led by editor-in-chief, Professor Diggle.
The dictionary provides fresh definitions and translations in contemporary English, gleaned from the Herculean task of re-reading most of Ancient Greek literature, from its foundations in Homer, right through to the early second century AD.
The chief executive of the Local Government Association (LGA) Mark Lloyd is made a CBE.
Mr Lloyd, who lives in Cambridge with his wife, Shan, and his two children, Bella, 10, and Henry, nine, has been awarded a CBE for services to local government and charity.
Mr Lloyd, a former trustee of the Arthur Rank Hospice Charity, was chief executive at Cambridgeshire County Council before taking on the national role at the LGA in 2015.
He has been instrumental in supporting councils throughout the COVID-19 pandemic ensuring they have all the powers and resources needed to protect and support communities and businesses and to support the vaccination roll out.
Mr Lloyd said: “I am really pleased and extremely humbled to receive this award. I work with amazing people at the LGA and across the whole of local government. Together we are doing everything we possibly can to change people’s lives for the better.
“I am truly grateful to all my colleagues, my family and my friends who support me to make the contribution I do and enjoy so much.”
Read more about Mark Lloyd’s honour here.
Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
Dr David Bentley, vice-president and chief scientist at Illumina Cambridge, is made an OBE for services to expertise and leadership in human medical genomics.
He said: “I am delighted to receive this award, especially as it honours the rich and world-leading scientific environment here in Cambridge. I am very grateful to be a member of this community, one which promotes scientific excellence, stimulates innovation and shares breakthroughs in genomic medicine for the benefit of patients worldwide.”
After completing degrees from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Dr Bentley was a co-founder of the Sanger Centre - now known as the Wellcome Sanger Institute - and he led its major contributions to the Human Genome Project. Dr Bentley became an advisor to Solexa in 1998 and vice president and chief scientist of Illumina in 2007, when it acquired Solexa.
Illumina is a global leader in sequencing technology.
Read more about Dr Bentley’s honour here.
Two AstraZeneca employees have been made OBEs.
Dr Julia Thompson, from Thriplow, who is AstraZeneca’s executive director, biopharmaceutical development, research and development, is also made an OBE in the list.
“This award is a great honour and privilege. I am enormously proud of what AstraZeneca has done towards the pandemic response and I am glad that I have been able to contribute. As the leader of a clinical supply function, my work through the pandemic could not have been more purposeful, more acutely aligned to our mission of bringing innovative medicines and vaccines for COVID-19 to the patients we serve. I would like to thank my team, and the many colleagues, contractors and partners that we work with for their focus, expertise and hard work. Together so much is possible.”
Dr Ruth March, from Cambridge, who is senior vice president, precision medicine and biosamples, research and development, said: “I am proud to accept this award on behalf of the team who overcame many challenges to enable regular COVID-19 diagnostic testing for our employees and to keep the supply of innovative medicines that AstraZeneca delivers to patients every day. Through their untiring efforts, teamwork and expertise, not a single manufacturing line or research lab have closed throughout the pandemic. It has been truly humbling to see how rapidly skills developed for high throughput screening and technologies have been redeployed to protect our colleagues and our sites. I would like to thank all colleagues and collaborators for their amazing vision and dedication.”
Read more about their honours here.
Dr Ian Campbell, lately interim executive chair of Innovate UK, is made an OBE for services to innovation.
Dr Campbell, from Spaldwick, was appointed to the role at Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, in May 2018, having joined as director for health and life sciences in 2016. He joined LifeArc in autumn 2020.
Ian is an experienced executive in life sciences and the diagnostics sector. He served as chief executive of Arquer Diagnostics, a company developing and commercialising immunoassay tests for cancers of the urinogenitary tract.
Previously, he served as chief executive of Imperial College spin-out company Molecular Vision, developing a disposable, quantitative point-of-care diagnostic platform, before being acquired by Abingdon Health in 2012.
Ian has also served as commercial director with Bespak Europe. He has a strong scientific background, gaining his PhD at the University of Glasgow.
UK Research and Innovation chief executive Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser said: “Many congratulations to Dr Ian Campbell for his thoroughly deserved recognition. He has made outstanding contributions to the research and innovation system through his leadership as interim executive chair of Innovate UK, including in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Francis Butterfill, head of integrated services at Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group, is made an OBE for services to the Royal Air Force.
Mr Butterfill, from Cambridge, better known as Frank, is head of integrated services at Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group. His OBE is for services to the Royal Air Force.
“It goes without saying that I am totally delighted to have received this incredible honour and if I am honest I am not sure it has really sunk in yet. Having started my career at apprentice at Marshall over 40 years ago, I could never have imagined that my work supporting the RAF would be recognised in this way and I am very grateful for all of the opportunities that Marshall has given me.
“When I look back over my time here, I have worked with so many fantastic people and there are so many things we have achieved together it is difficult to pick one highlight. However, I think the work we have been doing over the past two years to ensure that our customer has had continuous aircraft availability to support humanitarian missions throughout the pandemic has made me particularly proud.”
Sonia Walsh, governor of HM Prison Wayland, is honoured with an OBE for services to the prison and probation service.
Ms Walsh, from Ely, was governor of Wayland for two and a half years and had governed another prison beforehand.
She retired in September after 33 and a half years of service in Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation Service.
She said of the honour: “It was lovely; it was really nice and just really unexpected, to be honest. It’s the last thing I ever thought of, so when I opened it I probably felt quite emotional actually. It's quite humbling really.
“I joined the service in 1988. I was playing a volleyball match against a prison at the time and speaking to people that were in the service, and I hadn’t really considered the prison service before.
“I went away and thought about it and thought, ‘I think that’s a job that I would like to do’. So I ended up applying and that was it, and I ended up staying all those years.”
Sonia continues: “It is a very unusual career to have and it’s not until you join the service and you live the service - because you do have to live it really - that you start to understand the criminal justice system, the people you’re working with and the importance of the work you’re actually doing.
“I think as each year passes and you become more embedded into the role and into the service and the organisation itself, it’s something very unique, it’s something very special. Not everybody can do that job - it’s a tough job for many, many staff - but once you do it, it just brings out a sense of pride and a want to give people a space to maybe change their lives if they wish to.
“So each year that passed, for me, was an achievement because I don’t think I set out to do all those years; I just set out to think ‘this is a career and I’ll probably do 12 years or something and then I’ll leave’. But I didn’t, I ended up staying - it gets under your skin, I think.”
Sonia concludes: “It’s such a hard thing to describe, but I would say that what I felt the most of all my service was actually there is good in people everywhere, and everybody deserves a chance. And to do that job... you are there to serve the public and give the prisoners in particular the chance to rehabilitate and hopefully go out and mend lives or do things differently.
“You can’t achieve that with every single person - far from it actually - but if you can achieve some of that, collectively... it's not just ever down to just the governing governor, it’s down to all the staff that work under you, to be honest, and you couldn’t do it without those staff, genuinely, and you couldn’t do it without maybe some of the prisoners, genuinely...
“And if you can all kind of work from the same direction, you can achieve good things with good outcomes, and I think sometimes the smallest things can be an enormous reward. It’s not always something magnificent or something really big, the smallest thing can feel enormous.
“So if somebody learns to read or write, or somebody chooses to take a different path, or you see a member of staff achieving, progressing... and some of their relationships with prisoners, you can go home and think, ‘Yeah, that was a good day’.”
Catherine Lynne McClure, known as Lynne, is director of Cambridge Mathematics and is made an OBE for services to education.
Cambridge Mathematics is committed to championing and securing a world-class mathematics education for all students from three to 19 years old. Cambridge Mathematics is a collaboration of three University of Cambridge partners – Cambridge Press and Assessment, and the Faculties of Mathematics and Education.
Ms McClure has had a varied career in mathematics education, with experiences that range from the headship of a small primary school to principal lecturer and course leader at Oxford Brookes and Edinburgh universities.
While living in Scotland, she also ran her own consultancy which took her all over the world. Lynne has authored or edited many books and articles and is well known as a conference speaker and professional development lead.
Before setting up Cambridge Mathematics, she was director of the NRICH project based in the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Mathematical Sciences, and also served as PI on the DfE-funded innovative A-level project Underground Maths (previously CMEP).
She said: “I am very pleased personally to be a recipient in the New Year’s Honours, but even more delighted that this award highlights the importance of mathematics education - for everyone.
“At Cambridge Mathematics we are privileged to benefit from collaboration with amazing practitioners, researchers and designers in the UK and internationally, working together to improve mathematics education, worldwide.”
Prof Pauline Rose, professor of international education and director of research for equitable access and learning centre at the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, receives the OBE for services to international girls’ education.
She said: “I’m truly honoured and genuinely surprised to receive an OBE for services to international girls’ education. Thanks to all who’ve worked with me, supported and challenged me over the years. I look forward to continued collaboration on evidence to improve quality education for all.”
Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)
Dr Robert Bud, affiliated scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, is made an MBE for services to the Science Museum and Northern Industrial Heritage. He is emeritus keeper at the Science Museum, London, where he was was a senior curator for 40 years.
Dr Bud said: “I have benefited tremendously from association with the History and Philosophy of Science Department whose researchers have welcomed me, encouraged presentations, and collaborated on projects to great benefit of my work at the Science Museum.”
Danny Newland, from March, custodial manager at Littlehey prison, is awarded an MBE for public service.
He has worked at HMP Littlehey for five years, and in the prison service for almost 18 years.
The award was primarily for his voluntary role within the prison as a family liaison officer, supporting bereaved families. Danny also takes part in voluntary work in the community.
Danny said: “I feel very honoured and very humble in receiving this award and I am grateful to my nominees for putting me forward for this.
“I was surprised that I had received this for my work within the prison and just assumed it was for the hundreds of hours of voluntary work that I have completed in the last two years during Covid times.
“I am so proud to receive this, but in prison and in the voluntary field, we all work as a team and the people who I work with on a daily basis are also unsung heroes and I wouldn’t have received this without their help and support and dedication. I would like to thank each and every one of those people who go that extra mile through very difficult times.”
Karen Loveridge, head of reducing reoffending at HMP Littlehey, said: “Danny works hard in his voluntary role as a family liaison officer to support families who lose their loved ones whilst they are in a custodial environment.
“He does this with care, respect and commitment, and we are delighted that he has received this honour as recognition for his outstanding work.”
Lauren Steadman is made an MBE for her services to triathlon.
The Paralympic gold medallist, who grew up in Sawtry, is the current Paralympic Champion in the Women’s Individual PTS5 race, three-time World Champion and seven-time European Champion. Lauren was born missing her lower right arm but continues to overcome any barriers in her path as she swims, bikes, and runs her way to Olympic success.
The one-time Strictly dancer and winner of Celebrity SAS has also achieved academic successes, with a first-class degree in psychology, a masters in business management and has an upcoming place at the University of Cambridge to begin a PhD in psychology.
Also honoured with an MBE is Lorna Weston.
Managing director of Thera East Anglia, she has been honoured for services to people with learning disabilities
Ms Weston, from Wimblington, Cambridgeshire, works for Thera, a charitable group of companies which support people with a learning disability with a diverse range of needs.
Thera was first set up in 1998 and has grown from supporting five people in Cambridgeshire to providing a range of support across the UK for around 3000 people with a learning disability.
Lorna has been the MD for Thera East Anglia since November 2014 and has more than 20 years' experience working with people with a learning disability in various roles, starting as a support worker. Lorna’s role is to lead Thera East Anglia and ensuring the provision of high quality support for people with a learning disability. Her role was instrumental in helping Thera East Anglia achieve an Outstanding CQC rating in December 2019.
Lynne Radbone, principal paediatric dietitian at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is made an MBE.
Ms Radbone, of Huntingdon, has been honoured for services to sick and premature babies.
Luke Collet-Fenson, from Ely, senior private secretary to the chief medical officer at the Department of Health and Social Care, was honoured with an MBE for public service during Covid-19.
Prof Lorand Bartels, professor of international law in the faculty of law and a fellow of Trinity Hall, receives an MBE for services to UK trade policy.
Prof Bartels, who is currently chair of the UK’s Trade and Agriculture Commission, said: “It is a great honour for a trade lawyer to be recognised in this way. It has been a privilege to be able to work with the government over the last few years as it has developed its newly independent trade policies, and it has been immensely satisfying to be able to put my academic work into practice. I hope that this award inspires others to become involved in what is truly a fascinating and important area of international law.”
Medallists of the Order of the British Empire (BEM)
There was a BEM for Lesley Rawlinson, who lives in Cambridge and is laboratory manager at Imperial College London.
She received the honour for services to the Covid-19 response where she made significant contributions to enabling vital Covid research at the London university.
Cambridge’s Irene Richards has been made a BEM for voluntary service to safeguarding and to the community in the London Borough of Enfield.
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