Reblogged from Geoffrey David West:

“Arise, Sir John.”

After the tap on each shoulder by the Queen’s sword, the words she said evoked the chivalric romance of the days of the Knights of the Round Table, and indeed, I couldn’t quite believe it was all happening to me.

True, I had led a long and busy life, done my best for the various charities I’ve worked with and raised funds for, and hopefully I’ve put a bit more back into the world than I’ve taken out. But do I deserve a knighthood? I’m not sure about that at all. Because you might say that my profession is a bit unusual, and it hardly compares with the work done by the great and the good in whose company I was spending the day.

Afterwards, in the evening, those of us ‘new knights’ who weren’t meeting up with our families were invited to gather together in a room near the palace, and were given copious amounts of very fine wine to drink. Much later, when we were all pretty far gone in our cups, we were addressed by an ‘old hand’.

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