Emeli Sande to collect MBE at palace
8 February 2018, 07:17 | Updated: 8 February 2018, 07:18
Two chart-topping artists from different eras of British music will be honoured at Buckingham Palace on Thursday.
Both Emeli Sande and Sandie Shaw will collect their MBEs, awarded in the Queen's Birthday Honours last year, in recognition of their services to music.
Sande, who was born in Sunderland to Zambian father Joel Sande and English mother Diane Sande, has had a string of hits including two UK number one singles.
The 30-year-old Next To Me musician, from Alford, Aberdeenshire, was named Brit Awards Critics' Choice winner for 2012 and in the same year performed at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London.
She has also taken part in the charity singles Do They Know It's Christmas? (2014), recorded to raise funds for the Ebola crisis in west Africa, and Bridge Over Troubled Water in response to the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy.
Just behind Sande in the queue will be swinging sixties star Shaw, who scored Britain's first Eurovision Song Contest win in 1967 with her hit Puppet On A String.
The 70-year-old, who achieved three UK number one singles in her career and was known for performing barefoot, said of her award she was "proud to be representing women in music amongst the honours".
Designer Sir Terence Conran is to have the rare privilege of becoming a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour - a special award held by only 65 people at any one time, recognising services of national importance.
The 86-year-old founder of furniture company Habitat will be recognised for services to design.
Also among those picking up honours is Majid Mukadam, a lung and transplant surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, who has spent the last six years encouraging the Asian community to join the organ donor register.
From talks he has given in the local community, he estimates that he has encouraged around 25,000 Asians to sign the donor register.
He was also made an MBE.
And a police officer stabbed in the head while trying to save a woman and two young children in February 2012 is to receive a bravery medal.
Sergeant Mark Wright, an officer with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), will be awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal.
Commanders praised him for putting his life in danger when he entered a house in Lurgan, Co Armagh, where a man armed with two knives had assaulted the woman and locked himself inside with the two children.
