michaelr: recipients are always sounded out by confidential mail first to ensure the award would be welcome to them. Quite a number do not accept. Presumably it means something to those that do, or they wouldn't. Evelyn Waugh the great 20C novelist turned down the CBE (Commander of the Order of the Bath) because he felt he should have been offered a knighthood ~~ "I prefer to wait until I shall have won my spurs," he replied to the letter from the Office of Her Majesty's Private Secretary, Awards Division - or whoever it was...

Eliza's MBE, BTW, for any who may not know, stands for her being a Member of that Order. There is also an OBE status in between the two -- Officer of...

~M~