Harrison said everyone had thought Tate was going to have a Lear bicentenary exhibition, and when that proved not the case the Ashmolean, with its extensive Lear holdings, felt almost honour-bound to fill the gap.
Almost all the laureates honoured thus far did their main work in America, and the majority are actually American (with a curiously high number of Scandinavian exceptions).
"Ragip Zarakolu has been honoured by almost every leading publishing organisation in the world for his courage, his patience, his intellectual rigour and his pursuit of genuine democracy," said Balakian.
Almost three-quarters of those honoured are ordinary people who have made a notable contribution to their community, often without recognition.
In an act "almost like religious penance", Johnson honoured his father's memory 50 years later by returning to his bookstall in Uttoxeter to make amends for his refusal to work the stall while his father lay dying.
But after drying out he wrote arguably his finest novel, Falconer, and won almost every honour going.
One journalist quoted in the report said: "There is an old-fashioned macho culture in which bullying is seen as almost an honour.
Perhaps the almost automatic honours granted to such jobs – bestowed as if they were part of the role's terms and conditions – would be fine if gongs were reserved for public service.
But the real deal, as Chandler documented, was that in Hollywood "the screenplay is written by a salaried writer under the supervision of a producer – that is to say, by an employee without power or decision over the uses of his own craft, without ownership of it, and, however extravagantly paid, almost without honour for it".
I wanted to tell a story about "honour" killings, from the perspective of somebody who had survived, because almost always victims of "honour" crime die, and it's very hard then to tell the story, because you never have the perspective of that person and what they went through.
