Investiture Details

Alan's Investiture took place on Wednesday, 19 March 2003, at Buckingham Palace. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II awarded his honour. Here are some notes regarding the ceremony:

People whose names are published in the Queen's Birthday Honours and New Year Honours lists usually receive their award from the Queen (or the Prince of Wales or, occasionally, another member of the Royal family) at an Investiture in Buckingham Palace. Usually twenty Investitures are held in the Ballroom at the Palace each year, with another at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh and sometimes one more at Cardiff Castle in Wales.

Up to 150 recipients attend each ceremony, and each recipient can nominate three friends or relations to sit in the audience to witness the occasion. The Queen enters the room attended by two Gurkha Orderly Officers, a tradition begun by Queen Victoria in 1876. Also on duty are members of the Queen's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard, which was created by Henry VII in 1485. Music is provided by either a military band or an orchestra from the Purcell School of Music. The Queen, or the member of the Royal family holding the Investiture, remains standing throughout. Each Investiture takes about an hour.

After the National Anthem has been played either the Lord Chamberlain or the Lord Steward announces the name of each recipient and the achievement for which he or she is being honoured. After his name is announced, the knight-elect kneels on a knighting-stool in front of the Queen who then lays the sword blade on the knight's right and then left shoulder. The sword she uses belonged to her father, King George VI. [See top photo.]

After he has been dubbed, the new knight stands up (contrary to popular belief, the words 'Arise, Sir ---' are not used), and the Queen then invests the knight with the insignia of the Order to which he has been appointed (a star or badge, depending on the Order). The Queen then places the decoration on the person concerned [second and third photos] before congratulating him on receiving the award. [The badge of the Knights Bachelor is shown at here.]

The appointment of Knights Bachelor originates in the Middle Ages and recipients are called "Sir" but have no post-nominal letters. Alan retained his CBE, and was formally titled Sir Alan Bates, CBE.

Jasper Gerard meets Sir Alan Bates:

Chinks in a lonely knight's armour

Sunday Times, 5 January 03. IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE that our newest theatrical knight glowered to prominence in "Look Back in Anger." Logs sizzle below Christmas lights in his glorious farmhouse, from where Sir Alan Bates surveys his sheep on snow-sprinkled peaks. Such scenes of crackling contentment are misleading, however. The heart was ripped out of Bates's life, first when his son died, and then when his wife followed, as if in sympathy. The knighthood, he says, is for the pair who cannot make it to the palace.

- about bloody time -

'About bloody time,' sums up the attitude of Bates's admirers, though the 68-year-old actor mumbles his humble gratitude and jokes how he is rolling the phrase 'Sir Alan' round his mouth.
He has hopped astutely between film, television and theatre. A favourite of playwrights including Osborne and Pinter, he was in at the start of the kitchen sink drama that revolutionised theatre.
Yet I have harboured a grudge against Sir Alan ever since my parents declared his sexual performance with Glenda Jackson in "Women in Love" too athletic for nippers, and I was sent to bed. Of the film's famous buttock-bearing brawl with Oliver Reed, he says: "It was strange and difficult. Not only did he want to be drunk for the scene, he wanted me to be drunk, too. But my God he was good."
It is something they have been saying about Bates since childhood (which was more greasy spoon than greasepaint). His mother took him to Derby's Little Theatre Club where the young Osborne was acting. He befriended the even younger Bates. Then an astute teacher nurtured the Bates talent. "It's why I found "Billy Elliot" terribly moving. I think every town has a wonderful teacher like that, who just knows when they spot someone. Friends called him "sissy" for wanting to be an actor. But he was always a stubborn loner (some now call him a recluse).

- extraordinary crowd -

He bounded into RADA, only to come up against an extraordinary crowd including Peter O'Toole and Albert Finney. Many such roisterers became friends. "I've always liked drink, but if I never had another it wouldn't bother me. Addiction is terrible." Pause. "I felt Oliver Reed could have been really great if he didn't have that. When he wasn't drinking he was completely different."
Clearly it was Reed's hidden sober side Bates preferred; you notice the longer you are with him, Sir Alan is rather shy.
Not that he dared let that show at RADA. "There was a huge sense of competition because we all knew we had potential," he says. "I was the only one who was unemployed afterwards," he grimaces, but here fate was kind: he was free a couple of months later when Osborne cast "Look Back in Anger."
Bates was slow to realise he was part of a new theatrical movement. "I just felt lucky to have some work," he says. "It was nice to have the aura of an angry young man without having even thought of it. It wasn't till the play moved to New York I realised this was big."
He has made American movies but has turned down most and refused Hollywood contracts. "I didn't want to be someone else's property and be told what to do. I would rather come back to Stratford or do 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' for the BBC." But he admits: "I have been in rubbish, as there was the matter of school fees."
So did he never envy Michael Caine the ease of the Bel Air pool? "He says he does everything he is offered and one in 10 will be good, and that's great," says Bates politely. "But he didn't do theatre, which allows you to be more in control. I remember being told I was up for an Oscar on the day I was playing a matinee in Bristol to nine people. But that's the wonderful irony: it was in Bristol I was doing the nitty gritty of the job."

- theatrical tradition -

Whereas the late Richard Harris told me he resented Hollywood for not rewarding great British and Irish actors with Oscars, Bates thinks we trumpet our theatrical tradition too much. While he has huge admiration for Olivier, whom he worked with, he considers it British arrogance not to recognise the comparable greatness of Pacino, Hoffman and De Niro.
Working with Olivier sounds rather trying. "You were on your toes the whole time," he recalls. "When I took over from him in 'The Three Sisters' I made my entrance with my back to the audience. And he said quite curtly: 'What are you doing that for?' But he had done it the same way. I'm sure he said that to see what I was made of."
Some highbrows snipe that Bates has avoided classical roles. The charge seems to rankle as he rattles off a credit list getting on for the complete works of Shakespeare. Compellingly, he adds: "When you have Harold Pinter and Simon Gray sending you scripts, it is hard to say no." Bates seems to snaffle much of what's best on television, notably Alan Bennett's "An Englishman Abroad," when he played Guy Burgess.
Critics, searching for a theme to the Bates odyssey, have suggested he tends to play ruined lives. "Most lives are ruined if looked at from a certain angle," he says softly, managing a weak smile. Pause. "I am trying to think of a life that isn't ruined, whether by grief or by someone else." Thirteen years ago his son Tristan died after a freak asthma attack aged 19 in Tokyo. Two years later his grieving wife of 23 years, Victoria, breathed her last. But he seems to have come through it somehow.

Home, always a giveaway, looks ordered and loved. "Well, you do either collapse or you carry on. You have to draw strength from those who have gone. You go through a trough of bewilderment. It's a physical as well as an emotional loss. For a year or two you think they are going to come through that door. You could get on the edge of, well, madness." He looks up and his eyes are filled with tears.
He is silent for an age, but this is no time to jump in, Paxman-style. "That was a hugely strong part of my life and it's gone, when it shouldn't have gone. But my feelings didn't die. They gave me a lot of strength." He breaks off. "This is a bit rambling, but I am trying to understand it." Notice the present tense: perhaps loss that large is never understood.

- contentment -

Suddenly he rouses himself and says forcefully: "Whatever is left of my life, and I might die tomorrow, I am still doing for them. If life is that tenuous you have got to use the time."
It must, though, have seemed easier to disappear in a fug of despair. "Oh, you can do that, I've done that, and I wouldn't criticise it. Wasn't it Henry II where he never smiled again? Well, you can understand that."
It took him three or four years before he could force the faintest of smiles again. "There are other people in your life. You have to look around. I've got another son (Benedick, also an actor). He's married now. He's going to have a baby. And I have a brother and family. But for some time I brushed them aside because they had life."
He looks disbelieving at his absurdity: ignoring the living to imagine the dead. He has been linked to the actress Angharad Rees, who has also lost a son. Has he found a new soulmate? "I would hope so, yes." And contentment? "I can be happy, but I can also plunge," and he stares out towards his cold sheep. Still, he no longer looks back in anger. "I can't use that term. You have got to say: it just is." Mostly, he doesn't even look back in acceptance. He tries to look forward. |||

Copyright 2003 The Times of London

Sir Alan's CBE

Note: Alan Bates was appointed CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in the 1995 Queen's Birthday Honours, and attended the December ceremony accompanied by his mother, his brother, Martin Bates, and his son, Benedick. (This honour entitled him to use the letters CBE after his name; the title is used even after his knighthood.) |||