leonardcohenforum.com

The UK goverment do their best to keep the names of people who refuse knighthoods secret but sometimes the would-be recipients
themselves speak out. Below is a short list of the many who have refused.
Wouldn't you rather see LC's name on this list rather than on the one that has the names of Robert Mugabe and Bill Gates on.


W. B. Yeats Anglo-Irish poet
Harold Pinter, playwright
Ralph Vaughan Williams,composer
Thomas Hardy, novelist/poet
Francis Bacon, artist
Joseph Conrad, author
A. E. Housman, poet
David Hockney artist
Aldous Huxley, author
Thomas Hardy, novelist/poet
C. S. Lewis, author, Oxford professor
Frank Auerbach, artist
Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International
Paul Scofield, actor
John Singer Sargent, US painter
J. B. Priestley playwright
Anthony Powell, writer
Robert Morley, actor and playwright
Alexander Mackenzie, second Prime Minister of Canada
L. S. Lowry, artist
Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz musician and broadcaster
C. S. Lewis, author, Oxford professor
T. E. Lawrence, World War I soldier, diplomat, and author
Anish Kapoor, artist
Rudyard Kipling, author and poet
Augustus John, artist
A. E. Housman, poet
Trevor Howard, actor
John Michael Faraday, chemist and physicist
Albert Finney, actor
John Galsworthy, novelist
Benjamin Britten, composer

Yes - Canadian Conrad Black received knighthood and - as I understand it - was forced by the Prime Minister of Canada to give up his Canadian citizenship upon acceptance. Conrad's ego to have the title was more than he could resist. But Leonard, as a Zen practitioner is far beyond matters of the ego and foolish awards and titles.