Stephen Fry and Jacqueline Wilson among celebrities recognised in the King’s New Year Honours 2025
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Actors Eddie Marsan, Sarah Lancashire and Carey Mulligan are also among those to receive honours. Stephen Fry has said he is “startled and enchanted” upon receiving a Knighthood for his work on mental health awareness as part of the King’s 2025 New Year Honours.
![[Actors Mulligan, Marsan and Lancashire have all been honoure]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/30/11/MixCollage-30-Dec-2024-11-27-AM-9006.jpg)
Blackadder and QI star Fry, 67, is an honorary fellow of Royal College of Psychiatrists and has been president of the mental health charity Mind since 2011. During his time as president of Mind, he has been instrumental in changing the conversation around mental health and has worked tirelessly to change public attitudes in the UK for the better.
Fry said: “When you are recognised it does make you feel a bit ‘crikey’, but I think the most emotional thing is that when I think of my childhood, and my dreadful unhappiness and misery and stupidity, and everything that led to so many failures as a child.
“And for my parents, really, what a disaster. I mean every time the phone rang, they thought, ‘Oh, God, what has Stephen done now?’ It was a sort of joke in the family.”. Fry is joined by many other figures from arts and culture on the list, such as Tracy Beaker author Jacqueline Wilson, and actors Eddie Marsan, Carey Mulligan, and Sarah Lancashire.
Wilson has been made a Dame Grand Cross (GBE) for services to literature. Earlier this year, she published Think Again, a grown-up sequel to her much-adored Girls in Love children’s novel. In September, she was asked in an interview in The Independent whether she has ever worried about no longer being relevant. “Yes!” came her quick, wide-eyed response. She spoke about how she had felt “lost” in her early career, before she found her feet in writing, and said she is not even thinking about giving it up: “I think now, when most sane people would say, just put your feet up, read other people’s books, enjoy yourself, I just feel compelled to carry on writing.”.
