Christopher Ricks, our Immediate Past President, has been knighted for “services to Scholarship” as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Others recognized this year include former British poet laureate Andrew Motion. In responding to this honor “for services to Scholarship,” Christopher Ricks, with characteristic generosity, praises all the services he has received, returning this statement:
“For services to Scholarship.” Thanks, that is, to all the services that have generously been done to me. By Boston University, to which John Silber and Jon Westling brought me 23 years ago; by Oxford (Balliol College, Worcester College); by Bristol University; by Cambridge (Christ’s College); and by the Institute of English Studies, University of London. By Oxford University Press, Longman, Faber, Penguin, and (soon) Yale University Press. By the Mellon Foundation. By the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Tennyson Society, the Housman Society, and the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. By colleagues and friends among whom it would be invidious to select. These have proved to be the indispensable services.
The ALSC warmly congratulates our colleague and friend Sir Christopher on this honor, and itself is honored by his thanks.