New Year Honours full list: Gareth Southgate and Sadiq Khan

A host of Team GB athletes, including runner Keely Hodgkinson - the 2024 BBC Sports Personality of the Year - also received honours.

Sir Stephen, 67, was recognised for services to promote mental health awareness, the environment, and charity.

Congratulations to Sir Stephen Fry for being added to the 2025 New Year Honours list, receiving a deserved knighthood for his work on mental health awareness and the environment. pic.twitter.com/21mBybentU

— Serious Classics (@SeriousClassX) December 30, 2024

Since 2011, he has been president of the mental health charity Mind and supported the conservation group Fauna and Flora International.

Sir Stephen told the PA news agency that he felt “startled and enchanted” after receiving the letter informing him of the knighthood and that it was “wonderful” to see the charities get recognition.

He added: “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.”

Sir Gareth, 54, was knighted for services to association football, after leading England to the finals of Euro 2020 and 2024, and the semi-final of the 2018 World Cup.

Sir Gareth declined to comment on the honour.

Meanwhile, Sir Sadiq, 54, was honoured for political and public service, having been the mayor of London since 2016.

He said: “I am truly humbled to have received a knighthood in the King’s New Year Honours.

“I couldn’t have dreamed when growing up on a council estate in south London that I would one day be mayor of London.

“It’s the honour of my life to serve the city I love and I will continue to build the fairer, safer, greener and more prosperous London that all of the capital’s communities deserve.”

More than 1,200 people from across the UK received honours in the latest list

Several athletes have been recognised after Team GB won 65 medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, while Team ParalympicsGB won 124 medals, including 49 gold medals, finishing in second place in the final medals table.

An MBE for Keely Hodgkinson, 22, caps a year in which she claimed gold in the 800 metres at the Paris Olympics, successfully defended her European title, and set a new British record of one minute 54.61 seconds that made her the sixth fastest woman in history.

Two-time Olympic champion Tom Pidcock, 25, is made an OBE, having won gold in mountain biking, while Paralympian Hannah Cockroft becomes a CBE after coming first in the T34 100m and 800m in the French capital.

Other honoured gold medallists include swimmer Duncan Scott (OBE), sailor Ellie Aldridge (MBE) and rowers Lola Anderson, Hannah Scott, Lauren Henry and Georgie Brayshaw (all MBE).

KEELY HODGKINSON IS AN OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALLIST ????✨

Nobody else even got close.#BBCOlympics #Paris2024 #Olympics pic.twitter.com/BlD7gxUK8d

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 5, 2024

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “Each and every day, ordinary people go out and do extraordinary things for their communities.

“They represent the very best of the UK and that core value of service which I put at the centre of everything this government does.

“The New Year Honours List celebrates more of these unsung heroes, and I thank them for their incredible contribution.”

Creator of The Tracy Beaker series, Jacqueline Wilson, was made a Dame Grand Cross (GBE) for services to literature, while actress Carey Mulligan and television presenter Alan Titchmarsh became Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Titchmarsh, 75, said telling his wife and daughters about the honour was a “teary moment”

The top gong goes to Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, who was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature.

Actor Eddie Marsan has been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and Myleene Klass has become a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

Marsan, 56, said: “I am shocked, delighted and deeply honoured to receive this award.

“I am only in this position because of the constant love and support of my wife, my family and the people I grew up with in Bethnal Green, so I share this with them all.”

Former F1 driver and broadcaster Martin Brundle is made an OBE and former Scotland and Liverpool footballer Alan Hansen has been made an MBE.

Meanwhile, Horizon IT scandal victims Lee Castleton, Jo Hamilton, Christopher Head and Seema Misra are made OBEs for services to justice.

Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted of fraud, theft, and false accounting over more than a decade, leading to job losses, ruined reputations and imprisonment.

Political figures were recognised for their public service, including Labour MP Emily Thornberry, who became a dame, and former West Midlands mayor Andy Street, who became a knight.

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The oldest person on the list is 103-year-old World War Two Mosquito pilot Colin Bell, awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) for charitable fundraising and public speaking.

Former RAF navigator George Kelly, 101, is made an MBE for his services to the Royal British Legion (RBL) and RAF veterans, while 100-year-old Roy Gibson receives a BEM having been the first director general of the European Space Agency.

The youngest recipients, both 18, are Mikayla Beames, awarded a BEM for her fundraising efforts supporting children with cancer, and para-swimmer William Ellard, made an MBE after winning gold in the S14 200m freestyle at the Paris Paralympics.