Ex-Spice Girl turned fashion designer Victoria Beckham and Oscar-winning actor Mark Rylance were among the public figures to receive Britain’s traditional New Year Honours on Friday but two recipients turned theirs down.
Beckham, who rose to fame in the 1990s girl band the Spice Girls and is married to former England footballer David Beckham, launched her first fashion label in 2006. The former Posh Spice is getting the recognition both for her work in fashion and for her role as UNAIDS ambassador.
She receives her Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) award 13 years after her husband and at a time when her label is threatened with closure after failing to file accounts.
Beckham was also criticized in British tabloid newspapers for telling her family she would be receiving an OBE before the announcement, with MP Peter Bone telling the Daily Mail it was “a betrayal of etiquette.”
There was immediate backlash on social media from people who thought Beckham’s background as a Spice Girl and current role running her fashion line made her a less-than-worthy candidate for the award.
Veteran war photographer Don McCullin, who was imprisoned in Uganda, shot in Cambodia and expelled from Vietnam, also received a knighthood in the annual announcement of state honors.
The 81-year-old, who took a famous picture of a shell-shocked US Marine during the Vietnam War, traveled to Iraq last month but has since said that he is “finished” with covering wars.
Television presenter and cancer campaigner Lynn Faulds Wood also turned down her Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) award, saying: “Let’s drag us into the 21st century.”
“I would love to have an honor if it didn’t have the word ‘empire’ on the end of it. We don’t have an empire,” she said.
“We’re a very backward-looking country at the moment. We shouldn’t have lords and ladies and sirs.”

Source: Arab News