The award-winning novelist Ian McEwan, who studied English literature at Sussex University, has been appointed a Companion of Honour in the Birthday Honours List.
Ian Russell McEwan, who turns 75 on Wednesday (21 June), joins a select band of those who have made a significant and sustained contribution to the arts, science, medicine or government.
The Order of the Companion of Honour is restricted to 65 people at any one time and the honour has been conferred fewer than 400 times since 1917.
McEwan said that he was delighted to have become a CH for services to literature. He joins the likes of former Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and John Major as well as authors such as EM Forster, Graham Greene, who wrote Brighton Rock, and Salman Rushdie.
McEwan graduated from Sussex University in 1970 and went on to study for a masters degree at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich.
In 1975 McEwan’s first book was published. First Love, Last Rites was followed by another collection of short stories, In Between the Sheets, in 1978.
His first novel was also published in 1978, The Cement Garden. It was followed by The Comfort of Strangers three years later.
According to Wikipedia: “The nature of these works caused him to be nicknamed Ian Macabre.”
His novels over the past 40 years include The Child in Time, Enduring Love, Atonement, On Chesil Beach and The Children Act – all of which have been turned into films.
Another of his novels, Amsterdam, won the Booker Prize in 1998. The book is one of six to have been nominated, with only one of those failing to make the shortlist for the annual prize.
The novelist and screenwriter was made a CBE – a Commander of the Order of the British Empire – in the New Year Honours List in 2000.
And in 2012, Sussex University presented McEwan with its 50th Anniversary Gold Medal in recognition of his contribution to literature.
As well as short stories and novels, McEwan has written a number of screenplays, children’s stories and an oratorio.
McEwan said that he was “delighted” to be recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours and told the PA news agency: “News of the honour, in a letter from the Cabinet Office, was a complete surprise and, naturally, I was delighted.
“I guess it amounts to a really good review.
“I’m now entering my 54th year of writing fiction. As all dedicated writers know, a literary life is not a career so much as a way of being.
“The task in hand, the novel one is trying to create, is always there, a constant and intimate companion.
“The writers who precede me in this award have long been companions too – Maugham, Greene, Larkin, Pinter, Margaret Atwood, Antonia Fraser and my friend Salman Rushdie. Truly, a companionable honour.”
