Stories in the data
Declined honours
People who were offered a British honour and turned it down - from an MBE up to a knighthood, damehood or peerage. Plotted by the year they declined (where the date is recorded), colour-coded by honour.
439 people · source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), accessed 2026-06-12.
Declined honours over time
Select a dot on the chart, or a person below, to see why they declined (where recorded) and the sources.
Peerage (80)
Knighthood (126)
Damehood (7)
Order of the British Empire (205)
Order of Merit / Companion of Honour (5)
Royal Victorian Order (1)
Other order (15)
Data adapted from List of people who have declined a British honour on Wikipedia, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0. References are those cited in the Wikipedia article. More analysis →