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)
“What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were “anti-family.” . . . It was motherhood that got me into the movement in the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the women’s movement that put self-esteem back into “just a housewife,” rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of “instinct” and making it human, deliberate, powerful.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“There is no intrinsic worth in money but what is alterable with the times, and whether a guinea goes for twenty pounds or for a shilling, it is ... the labour of the poor and not the high and low value that is set on gold or silver, which all the comforts of life must arise from.”
—Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)