Queen rewards bravery

Courage Rewarded in Honours List

The nursery nurse Lisa Potts, who saved the lives of children attacked by a machete-wielding maniac at a school picnic, gets the George Medal.

The medal is the second highest civilian award for gallantry.

Lisa Potts, who suffered terrible injuries while protecting the youngsters, is just one of several brave people honoured for acts of bravery.

Three Dunblane teachers, including Gwen Mayor, who died in the massacre, receive the Queen's Commendation for Bravery.

Philip Lawrence, the headmaster of St George's Roman Catholic School, Maida Vale, London, who was stabbed to death defending a pupil from an attacker, is also posthumously awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal.

The Queen's Gallantry Medal also goes posthumously to the firefighters Stephen Griffin and Kevin Lane, who died in a flame-engulfed house while trying to rescue children in Blaina, Gwent, last year.

The bravery awards are detailed in a special supplement to the main list, in which top names in show business and the world of sport are honoured.

The England cricket captain Mike Atherton gets an OBE, while Sir Colin Cowdrey, the former England captain, and chairman of the International Cricket Council, is one of the three new life peers in the list.

There is an OBE for Walter Smith, long-serving manager of Scottish football champions Glasgow Rangers.

The jazz singer Cleo Laine becomes a dame, while the comedienne Victoria Wood gets an OBE.

There are knighthoods for the veteran actor Donald Sinden, the playwright Tom Stoppard, and the yachtsman Chay Blyth, the first person to sail "the wrong way" round the world.

The artist David Hockney, who is helping to revamp the British Airways livery, becomes a Companion of Honour, while the award-winning fashion designer Zandra Rhodes gets a CBE.

The Oscar-winning Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Gromit, the madcap plasticine puppets, gets a CBE, while Michael Bond, who gave the world Paddington Bear, becomes an OBE.

The Honours list which contains 980 names, somewhat fewer than usual, is different in one principal respect from previous lists over the past 18 years as there are no honours for political services.

Some names were submitted by Mr Major before the election, but they were excluded by the new Prime Minister. It has always been Labour policy not to recognise political services in this way.

However, some of the rejected names may appear in Mr Major's resignation honours list next month. The Prime Minister is unlikely to tamper with that.

The list includes a number of lollipop ladies, a milkman, a roadman, a crofter - and an MBE for one of the most photographed men in Britain: Robert Jordan, the doorkeeper at Number 10 Downing Street.