Background
Pinter declined a British knighthood in 1996, when it was offered to him on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II by British Prime Minister John Major, then leader of the Conservative Party. Despite his declining it, many in the media (both in the UK and elsewhere) still refer erroneously to Pinter as "Sir Harold Pinter."
In addition to having already been made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1966, he accepted the award of Companion of Honour (CH) for services to Literature from the British monarch in 2002. He was presented the Nobel Prize in Literature in December 2005 and the French Légion d'honneur in January 2007.
He was awarded academic honorary degrees at the University of Leeds, in April 2007 (in person), at which its Humanities faculty processed in full academic garb solely to present the honorary doctorate to Pinter; at the University of Kragujevac, in Serbia; and at the University of Cambridge, in June 2008 (both of the latter in absentia). In December 2007, the British Library announced that it had acquired his literary archive for over £1.1 million (approx. US$2.24 million) on behalf of the British nation.
After having accepted the honorary presidency of the Central School of Speech and Drama, a constituent college of the University of London, in October 2008, he received an honorary fellowship during its honorary degree ceremony, also in absentia, due to ill health, on 10 December 2008, two weeks before his death from cancer on 24 December 2008.
Read more about this topic: Honours And Awards To Harold Pinter
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