Mark Haddon: Why I Turned Down the OBE

On 23 November 2023, I received a letter from the Cabinet Office. In the letter, I was informed “in the strictest confidence” that I had been “recommended to His Majesty the King for the award of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours List”. Did the Prime Minister “please” submit my name to the King for confirmation?

I had always said I would decline an honour if offered to me, so I was very glad that my resolution did not weaken on this occasion, like that of a dieter faced with a large bowl of treacle and cream pudding. On the contrary, when I sat down to write a letter in return, explaining exactly why I did not like the offer, I was more adamant than before.

I thought about writing about it at the time, maybe on Instagram, but I remembered stories of other people who had publicly declined honours and been greeted with a list of other, far more deserving people who had declined them without mincing their words. (Graham Greene, Dawn French, George Harrison, Nigella Lawson, Prunella Clough, Caryl Churchill… there’s a Wikipedia page listing them, and it’s long.) I was also quietly proud of my letter as part of the polemic. But at the time I was very slowly coming through the fog of Covid, and it was hard to make difficult decisions and write anything that justified them. So I agreed with the people in my life who suggested I be careful about sticking my head above the parapet.

Now I have a clearer head and I am thinking about the subject again, watching the latest round of Instagram accolades. I feel more and more that silence, no singing, no dancing, obedience to the Cabinet Office’s insistence on “the strictest secrecy” is part of a code of conduct – about what we should and shouldn’t discuss in public – that works almost exclusively to the advantage of those in power.

In my response to the Cabinet of Ministers I explained:

I would feel uncomfortable accepting an honour that assumed an uncritical acceptance of the British Empire as a good thing.

While I realise his involvement is nominal, I do not want to accept anything from Rishi Sunak or any other member of this government. I believe they have been the most incompetent, most selfish and most morally bankrupt government I have ever known. They have continually sought to line their own pockets and the pockets of their friends, showing a callous disregard for the humanity of many of the most vulnerable members of society, in many cases willingly demonising them in exchange for short-term political gain: refugees, benefit claimants, the disabled, the working poor, the unemployed…

I am a Republican. There are several reasons for this, but I am particularly uncomfortable with the idea that one family should, by virtue of birth, be treated as superior to other people who must demonstrate their inferiority by bowing to their supposed betters. How can we believe that all people are equal when this inequality, this respect, is built into the very foundation of our society? As a result, I was unable to attend the investiture.

More generally, while honors are intended to be simply gifts bestowed by an institution, they also function to make the recipient feel obligated to that institution. I am not a particularly vocal or regular critic of the government, crown, or state, but when I am, I want to be able to speak with complete freedom, free from any accusation of hypocrisy.

I was fairly confident in my ability to reject molasses and cream because I had done something similar before. When my novel Strange incident with dog at night won the Commonwealth Prize for First Novel I was asked if I would like to meet the Queen. The offer was made shrewdly at the end of a fine meal and plenty of good wine with the judges at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. (I remember the Queen Mother had a whole set of wonderful Hockney prints from Cavafy – lots of naked boys in bed.) I said I would think about it and come back to them the next day, as I did with all important decisions (an excellent rule I learned to apply after An interesting incident). I then sent an email not dissimilar to the one above. I later learned that the offer to meet the Queen had only been made because Novel Prize winner Caryl Phillips had turned down the same offer, and I was a potential understudy, which eliminated any remaining guilt I felt.

The OBE also comes with a few extras, detailed in the accompanying booklet ‘Receiving the award – Important information for recipients’, which may tempt those on the fence. If you accept – and your acceptance is accepted – you can use the chapel at St Paul’s Cathedral for christenings, weddings and funeral services and apply to the College of Arms for a coat of arms if you wish.

I have a visceral aversion to pomp and ceremony, to uniforms, ranks and exclusive clubs, which goes back to my school days. My father came from a working-class background (his mother worked on the factory floor at Rest Assured Beds, his father in a similar position at Barratt’s Boots and Shoe Works). He became an architect, set up his own practice and decided to send me to a private school because he couldn’t turn back the clock and send himself there. He would have loved it, as he loved his military service. Join the Combined Cadet Force and you could even shoot a gun. Many years ago I described it as an open prison with a really good cultural background and I was never invited back. The comparison was deliberate. I have visited many real prisons over the years to give talks and run workshops, and there is something in the air that takes me straight back to my school days. It is partly the acoustics: the shouting men and the echoes of the large rooms with very little furniture and no curtains. It is the smell of sweat, aftershave and boiled vegetables. There’s something else, more nebulous but just as powerful: suppressed anger and hierarchy written in the air like lines on a weather map.

At the age of 12, I was beaten for something I hadn’t done, by a teacher who was incredibly pleased with his actions (“I can justify it because I know I’m right and they’re wrong”). Six bloody cuts to my buttocks were small beer compared to what other boys in similar schools endured, but the act itself gave me a deep and lifelong skepticism of authority and those who wielded it. And the aftermath—to my surprise, I discovered that the beatings had increased my status with both boys and staff—made me see the whole system with clearer eyes. I didn’t like what I saw, although it took me years to learn the language I needed to express that angst, to myself and others.

Some of the students who attended this school and schools like it now run the country, directly or indirectly. And in doing so, they attempt to replicate the system in which they were educated and feel most comfortable. Isolation from the rest of the world. Assumption of superiority. Prefects and faggots. Us and them. Character-building punishments and rewards for being the best in the class.

All people are equally worthy of dignity and respect. The demand that people from one group bow and curtsy to a supposedly superior group is stuck in my throat and poisons our society. As is every ceremony, uniform, and rule that replicates this dynamic. And after having escaped over the wall of a facility and out of the spotlights to find myself in the safety of the trees, I am not about to accept a reward that would involve walking back through the front door in a suit.

None of this is a criticism of friends who have accepted honours (not to mention those who tell me excellent, scurrilous gossip about royal wedding intrigues, for example). But if they are free to celebrate their awards, then we who have rejected them should be free to ignore Cabinet etiquette. We should tell the world why we have not accepted – and celebrate our entry into the Parlour of the Rejected instead.