CONGRATULATIONS, you appear to have been made a knight.’ My colleague had been analysing a document in Latin for me, bearing my name and the signature of a deposed European monarch, which had arrived at our college in a long tube. I blinked, pulling a very shiny cross out of the parcel. My joy at this unexpected elevation of my humble station was tempered by the knowledge that I could never wear the handsome red-ribboned bauble; for, in the UK, it was merely that: a bauble.
There is a strict code of what to wear, when, in what size and on which clothing
Orders, medals and decorations are usually spotted at Remembrance Sunday services or those dinners that livery companies give in their spectacular halls. At first, they seem to be part of a
