Honours
Academic honours were heaped upon him, culminating in 1995 in a Doctorate of Letters Honoris Causa from Cambridge. During his lifetime it was widely rumoured that he had never been offered a knighthood because he had been staunchly pacifist before the Second World War, and during it a conscientious objector. The truth, however, is that he was offered one and declined it; partly from modesty, and partly because he thought it incongruous that a man who had refused to wield a bayonet should theoretically bear a sword. (citation: John Spencer, Sir Bob Hepple, P.R. Glazebrook and ATH Smith, "In Memoriams," 56 Cambridge L.J. 437 (1997)
The Jesus College, University of Cambridge Glanville Williams Society meets each year and is attended by 600 plus leading English lawyers.
In 1976, he was famously impersonated by Campbell McComas, an Australian comedian, at a hoax lecture at Monash University, Melbourne. Many people who knew Williams personally were reportedly fooled by the hoax. 100s and 100s attended, and the lecture ended with the words: "thank you for having me, but you have been had."
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Famous quotes containing the word honours:
“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)
“Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelist honours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)