Honours and Personal Life
He was awarded the CMG in 1997 in the Resignation Honours List of former Prime Minister John Major for his service as Principal Private Secretary. In 1998 he was appointed CVO and in 1999 awarded the KBE on the recommendation of Tony Blair on leaving the senior job at No. 10 Downing Street, a higher honour than normally bestowed, because of his work on the Northern Ireland Peace Talks. In 2005 Queen Elizabeth II promoted him to be a GCVO at the conclusion of her state visit to France to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale.
In 1976 he married Penelope Morris. John and Penny Holmes have three daughters: Sarah, Lucy and Emilie.
Read more about this topic: John Holmes (British Diplomat)
Famous quotes containing the words honours, personal and/or life:
“Come hither, all ye empty things,
Ye bubbles rais’d by breath of Kings;
Who float upon the tide of state,
Come hither, and behold your fate.
Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing’s a Duke;
From all his ill-got honours flung,
Turn’d to that dirt from whence he sprung.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“The historian must have ... some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)