A Unique Honour: A History Of The Order Of Merit

T he Order of Merit recognizes ‘exceptionally meritorious service’ in the military, the sciences, arts and literature. Restricted to twenty-four recipients (plus a small number of honorary members who are not British subjects or Commonwealth citizens), the ‘OM’ is one of the most exclusive clubs on Earth, and certainly the most accomplished. It is also the most personal of royal awards, for both recipient and giver. Admission is in the personal gift of the Sovereign. The evolution of its membership is a form of royal autobiography, written in patronage.

Elizabeth II has ruled for more than half of the Order’s existence, and has appointed just over half of its appointees, 97 out of 195. Like her predecessors, she has used the OM to build connections to the Commonwealth—current members include Jean Chrétien (2009) and John Howard (2012), the ex-prime ministers of Canada and Australia — and to favour innovative doctors and scientists, including her first female choice, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1965). But no monarch since George III has esteemed artists so highly, not least in picking the promising watercolourist, Prince Charles (2002).

Today’s OM is both close to its Georgian roots and thoroughly reflective of modern, meritocratic Britain. The idea of an order of twenty-four distinguished artists and writers goes back to around 1773, when King George III considered founding an Order of Minerva to recognize achievement in the arts and sciences. When his intentions became public knowledge, the intense speculation and debate on who might deserve membership caused him to abandon his plans. In 1844, Queen Victoria’s modern-minded consort Prince Albert revisited the idea of an “order of Merit” with the prime minister, Robert Peel, but it took until 1888 for another prime minister, Lord Salisbury, to submit a draft constitution for what we know as the Order of Merit in Science and Art. The Order was founded in 1902, to mark the coronation of King Edward VII.

Edward VII chose a full spectrum of eminent Victorians. The moustachioed builders of empire were first on the list: Lord Kitchener, Field Marshal Roberts and Garnet Wolseley, who Gilbert and Sullivan had spoofed as ‘the very model of a modern major-general’. But there were also three titans of the Victorian salon: George Frederic Watts (1902), William Holman Hunt and Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema (both 1905).

Edward VII also made Florence Nightingale (1907) the first female member. His heir, King George V, made a promising start with Thomas Hardy (1910), Sir Edward Elgar (1911) and Henry James (1916). James, the master of the long sentence, became the shortest-lived OM, lasting only six weeks; the longest-serving OM was the Duke of Edinburgh (1968-2021), a master of the short sentence.

The architects of the First World War dominated the selections of the 1920s, and the king-emperor may have preferred it that way. George V’s hobbies were collecting stamps and shooting animals. As for art, when George V and his consort Queen Mary made the first royal visit to the National Gallery in 1934, the king told the Gallery’s director Kenneth Clark (1976) that J.M.W. Turner had been ‘mad’.

King Edward VIII, having picked Mrs. Simpson as his queen, failed to pick anyone before he abdicated. His brother George VI found, like his father before him, that a world war defined his choices. The bohemian painter Augustus John (1942) was alone, among the generals, until he was joined by T.S. Eliot (1948) and Bertrand Russell (1949), who may have been a socialist but was also an earl and the grandson of one of Queen Victoria’s prime ministers.

Elizabeth II’s early reign was defined by imperial entropy and the redefinition of Britain as a soft-power superpower. The last viceroy of India, Earl Mountbatten (1965), was the last military OM to date. The Queen bolstered the poets with Walter de la Mare (1953) and the painters with Graham Sutherland (1960), whose portrait displeased his fellow OM Winston Churchill (1965). Her other choices in the Sixties included composer Benjamin Britten (1965), novelist E.M Forster (1969) and sculptor Henry Moore (1963), whose King And Queen, a meditation on the mystical aspects of monarchy, was conceived around the time of her coronation in 1952.

The arts continued to rise in the OM’s ranks through the 1970s, with Kenneth Clark (1976), whose celebrated Civilisation series brought the history of art to colour television; and the first theatrical nominees, the ballet dancer and choreographer Freddie Ashton (1977) and Laurence Olivier (1981). Today, the longest-serving living member is an architect, Norman Foster (1997).

The Queen keeps abreast of innovation in tech; as Royal observers attest, she is, like David Hockney (2012), a dab hand with an iPad. And should Her Majesty require advice on cleaning Buckingham Palace or fixing the wi-fi, she might consult Sir James Dyson (2015) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (2007). Meanwhile, if advice on the Royal Collection is needed, museum director Neil MacGregor (2010) can step in to help.

Rudyard Kipling and Francis Bacon were rare refusals, and David Hockney (2012) only accepted because “it would have been ungracious to turn it down”, but Lucian Freud (1993) accepted wholeheartedly. “It was good to accept,” Freud, a child refugee from Nazi Germany said. “After all, Britain had taken me in.” The enamelled badge, Freud recalled, came in a battered box. When an OM dies, the medal is returned to Buckingham Palace to await dispatch to the next recipient. The earlier custodians of Freud’s badge had included Thomas Hardy. Today, there are five badges awaiting allocation.

Since 1907, Buckingham Palace has commissioned a portrait of each OM. During his audience with the Queen, Freud suggested that he supply a self-portrait. “She thought it was something dodgy and got flustered. I’d been given a list of people selected by Phillip and Charles who might do it,” he told his biographer. After an exchange of letters, Freud was allowed to submit a self-portrait etching from 1996. Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary and registrar to the Order of Merit, advised as to the protocol:

“Is it ‘To Her Majesty?’,” Freud asked.
“‘To Her Majesty’,” Fellowes confirmed, “and if you could put your name in full, not initials.”

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