The Catholic historian and journalist Paul Johnson was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list last week, for services to literature. Mr Johnson’s many books include Pope John XXIII, The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage and Jesus: A Biography from a Believer. He has met several popes, and presented a copy of his 600-page History of Christianity in Polish to St John Paul II. Mr Johnson famously began on the left wing and moved firmly to the right; when challenged on this, he quoted the economist John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my views. What do you do, sir?” Mr Johnson wrote the Charterhouse column in the Catholic Herald from 2009 to 2012. TV entertainers Ant and Dec were made OBEs for services to broadcasting and entertainment. Dec (Declan Donnelly) has said: “I go to Mass, not every Sunday. But I do still go and my faith is important to me.” He considered becoming a priest when he was younger; his older brother Dermot did, and officiated at Dec’s wedding last year at St Mary’s Cathedral, Newcastle, where he is dean. In 2010 Dec fulfilled a promise he had made to his brother when, with Ant, he opened a Catholic retreat for young people in the Hexham and Newcastle Diocese in Consett, Co Durham. John Cornally, executive headteacher at Blessed Thomas Holford Catholic College, Altrincham, Cheshire, was awarded an OBE for services to education. The school is in the parish of St Vincent de Paul, Altrincham. The parish website says that “the headteacher does not want pupils to leave their religious teaching at the school gates. Pupils are encouraged to take their Catholicism into the community.” The philosopher Roger Scruton was awarded a knighthood. Professor Scruton, a prolific author on many subjects including religion, was also the founder of the Salisbury Review.