The Most Noble Order of the Garter, Britain’s seniormost order of knighthood and the oldest surviving order of chivalry in the world, recently added to its numbers, just in time for the British monarch’s Platinum Jubilee Year. On 31 December 2021, the Queen, in her role as Sovereign of the Garter and a member since 1947, bestowed her “personal gift” upon Valerie Ann Amos (Baroness Amos of Brondesbury) as Lady Companion, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (Tony Blair to most of us) as Knight Companion, and Camilla, HRH Duchess of Cornwall (the Queen’s daughter-in-law) as a Royal Lady of the Order. As a result, they joined a select group of notables deemed worthy of the Queen’s Gift, wholly independent of the Prime Minister’s advice. The Order of the Thistle (in Scotland), the Order of Merit, and the Royal Victorian Order are the other chivalric orders to which the Queen can nominate commoners at her personal discretion. In the pursuit of gender equality and racial diversity, the Queen significantly chose two women, including the first-ever Black member, for this year’s Garter awards.
The Order of the Garter is strictly limited to 24 commoner members, with additional supernumerary members being chosen from senior members of the royal family. Commoners eligible for the honour include holders of high public office, significant contributors to national life, and those who have served the monarch entirely to her satisfaction.
The origins of the Order of the Garter are frequently linked to an entertaining anecdote, which is most likely untrue. In its usual version, King Edward III was at a Court Ball sometime during or before 1348, when his dancing partner accidentally dropped her garter, a popular medieval contraption meant to hold up womens’ stockings and keep them in place. The precise identity of his companion is uncertain, but strong candidates include Joan, the “Fair Maid of Kent”, his first cousin and daughter-in-law, and Katharine Grandison, Countess of Salisbury. To save his dancing partner’s blushes, the gallant King picked the garter off the floor and then tied it around his leg, before carrying on dancing. He also admonished any onlookers who might have been harbouring distasteful thoughts in Norman French, the language of aristocracy, using the phrase “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (Shame on ‘him’ who thinks ill of it). This incident apparently inspired the formation of the Order, with the King, the Prince of Wales, and 24 Knight Companions as founding members. The numbers of Knights Companions has remained constant ever since, while supernumerary membership has been successively extended to members of the royal family in 1786, 1805, and 1831. Foreign royalty can also be included as Extra Knights Companions or Ladies of the Garter.
The Most Noble Order of the Garter is overseen by its own set of officials. The list includes a Prelate (Anglican Bishop of Winchester), a Chancellor (a Knight Companion), a Registrar (Anglican Dean of Windsor), a Garter King of Arms, and a Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod. St George, England’s patron saint, is also the patron saint of the order. St George’s Chapel, within the precincts of Windsor Castle, serves as the chapel of the order, where each knight is allocated a personal stall, containing a banner, a helmet, a crest, a sword, and an enamelled stall plate.
Membership of the Order will appeal to those who crave titles, pomp and pageantry, and like dressing up for the occasion. Knights Companions can henceforth be addressed as “Sir” and can add the letters “K.G” after their names, while Ladies Companions are to be known as “Lady” and can make use of the title of “L.G”. The big event of the Order’s annual calendar is the Garter Day procession and thanksgiving service at Windsor, held every June on the Monday of Royal Ascot week. This is when the three new Companions will be invested in the Throne Room of Windsor Castle, on 13 June in 2022.
The day’s attire is complicated and needs some explanation. Companions wrap up in a mantle of deep blue silk velvet, lined with white silk taffeta, and fastened with blue and gold rope strings. The crowning glory of the outfit, in a literal sense, is a low-crowned and wide-brimmed black velvet hat, topped by a plume of white ostrich feathers. The star, an embroidered gold badge displaying the heraldic shield of St George, and encircled by the Garter, is pinned to the left breast, while a crimson silk velvet sash is draped over the right shoulder. A gold collar chain, from which is suspended a figurine of St George on horseback slaying the Dragon, is worn around the neck. The all-important dark blue velvet Garter adorns the left calf in men, and the left arm in women.
This year’s award to Blair, who is eligible for the honour as an ex-Prime Minister, has led to some public criticism, from both individual members of the public and in the media, and even led to an online petition requesting withdrawal of his knighthood. His many achievements as three-term Prime Minister and the longest-serving Labour Party leader to date have unfortunately been overshadowed by his role in instigating the ill-conceived and ill-fated invasion of Iraq in 2003, which has led some to label him a “war criminal”.
The Queen has a more personal knowledge of Sir Tony Blair than most of us can claim. In her wisdom, and after carefully balancing the pros and cons, she has chosen to honour him- so be it. His award, fourteen years after demitting office, may also finally allow Blair’s prime ministerial successors to also be admitted to the three remaining vacancies within the Order. It seems a long time since a victorious wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, felt compelled to reject the offer of a Knighthood of the Garter the first time it was offered, back on 30 July 1945, after the public had overwhelmingly rejected his Conservative Party at the ballot box, on the entirely reasonable grounds that he could “hardly accept the Order of the Garter from the king after the people have given me the Order of the Boot”. It was an easy decision for him the second time around, on 24 April 1953, after he had regained the Prime Ministership in 1951. In 2022, the circumstances are somewhat different.
Ashis Banerjee