Connolly and Walters head honours list

Comedian Billy Connolly has been knighted and actress Julie Walters given a damehood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

TV star June Whitfield, mezzo soprano Sarah Connolly and 100-year-old Gone with the Wind actress Olivia de Havilland are among the other new dames.

Meanwhile, author JK Rowling, musician Sir Paul McCartney, television cook Delia Smith and designer Sir Terence Conran are new members of the prestigious Order of the Companion of Honour.

Former SAS soldier and best-selling novelist Andy McNab becomes a CBE for his work promoting adult literacy.

The same honour goes to writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs, singer Sade and veteran Archers actress June Spencer.

From the entertainment world, there are also OBEs for comedian David Walliams, and actresses Sarah Lancashire and Patricia Hodge, while composer and conductor George Benjamin is knighted.

Broadcaster Gloria Hunniford, who lost her daughter Caron Keating to cancer, is made an OBE for services to cancer charities.

Another broadcaster, Natasha Kaplinsky, becomes an OBE for services to Holocaust commemoration.

Pop stars Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande and 1960s singer Sandie Shaw are among the MBEs.

From sport there are OBEs for Olympic rower Heather Stanning and Ireland rugby captain Rory Best.

Former Great Britain Fed Cup captain Judy Murray is made an OBE for services to tennis.

Northern Ireland and Southampton football captain Steven Davis, rugby league coach Brian Noble, and boxing great John Conteh are all made MBE.

There is a damehood for Helena Morrissey, who founded the 30% Club with the aim of achieving greater female representation on UK corporate boards. And one of the most senior women involved in the UK’s railways – Alison Munro, the managing director of the HS2 high-speed rail project – is made a CBE.

The founder of Iceland supermarkets, Malcolm Walker, is knighted; brothers Brian and Alan Stannah, of Stannah Stairlifts, become MBEs, and Marks & Spencer style director Belinda Earl is made an OBE.

Britain’s last Dambuster, retired squadron leader George “Johnny” Johnson, 95, becomes an MBE for services to Second World War remembrance and the community in Bristol.

Jonathan Phipps, chairman of D-Day Revisited, which organises trips for veterans, is given the same honour.

The honours list is being hailed as the most diverse ever.

Of the 1,109 recipients, half are female, 6.5% have a disability, three-quarters undertake work in their communities, and 10% are from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background.

British Empire Medals go to school crossing patrol warden Effie Walker who started her job when Colgrain Primary in Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute opened in 1973, and the Pearly Queen of Old Kent Road, Doreen Golding.

Neil Hulme, from Worthing, West Sussex, who “almost single-handedly” saved the Duke of Burgundy butterfly from local extinction, also receives the BEM.

The Cabinet Office said the CBEs for Aisha Gill, of Roehampton University, for tackling forced marriage, honour crimes and violence against women; Gillian McNeil, of charity Theirworld, for the health and education of vulnerable children and women, and NSPCC chairman Mark Wood, reflect the prime minister’s “strategic steer” to the honours committee that the system should “support children and young people… remove barriers to success and work to tackle discrimination”.