The essential reference for anyone who needs to write, spend an invitation, formally introduce, or speak to their local sheriff, pastor, judge, or city councilman.

A history of the British Crown honours system in the 20th century, showing its evolution through a period of democratisation and decolonisation, Tobias Harper examines how governments used the honours system to shape ideologies of loyalty and service, while dissidents turned the symbolism of honours against the Crown.

This updated, full-colour illustrated book recounts the history of Canada’s various national orders, decorations, and medals. This expanded and updated edition of The Canadian Honours System surveys the history of Canada’s various orders, decorations, and medals, from New France’s Croix de St. Louis, Britain’s the Order of the Bath, to modern Canadian honours such as the Sacrifice Medal and recently created Polar Medal. Since the establishment of the Order of Canada in 1967, the Canadian honours system has grown to become one of the most comprehensive in the world — with more than 300,000 Canadians having been rewarded over the past fifty years. Each honour in the modern Canadian honours system, and its precursor, the British imperial honours system, is examined here in detail, including historical background, design, and criteria for bestowal. With special chapters on heraldry, protocol, and the proper mounting and wearing of medals, The Canadian Honours System is an essential reference for anyone interested in Canadian honours.

Honours fulfil one of the most fundamental desires of human beings, namely, to be recognised and held in esteem by others. There are thousands of awards in all areas of society: the state, arts and media, sports, religion, the voluntary sector, academia, and business. Awards are well visible, can raise the recipients' intrinsic motivation and creativity, and establish a bond of loyalty to the giver. They have distinct advantages over money and other rewards. Presenting empirical evidence using modern statistical techniques Honours versus Money argues that awards can significantly raise performance in different contexts even if they are purely symbolic, recommending how this can be used in practice. It makes the case for reorienting our focus- away from the monetary or material dimensions of work and private life, and towards the symbolic dimensions to celebrate and shine a light on merit and achievement. Honours versus Money discusses award bestowals in their different forms and facets, including as signals and as components of organisations' human resource strategies. It opens our perspective for motivational strategies beyond money, while also outlining their potential pitfalls.

`Sheds considerable new light on the nature, development and functions of the orders in a key phase of their history, and goes a long way to explaining how such archaic institutions could flourish in a culture that is commonly thought anti-traditional and especially hostile to the "middle ages"'. Professor JONATHAN BOULTON, University of Notre Dame. This is the first comprehensive study to set the British orders of knighthood properly into the context of the honours system - by analysing their political, social and cultural functions from the Restoration of the monarchy to the end of George II's reign. It examines the revival of the Order of the Garter and the proposals to establish the Orders of the Royal Oak and the Esquires of the Martyred King at the Restoration, the foundation (1687) and the revival (1703-4) of the Order of the Thistle as well as the foundation of the Order of the Bath (1725). It establishes just how central a part the orders played in the British high political life and its comprehensive and multidimensional approach carefully contrasts the idealistic discourse of virtue and honour to the real workings of the honours system; it also makes the case for the 'Chivalric Enlightenment'. The 'orders over the water', the Garter and the Thistle conferred by the Jacobite claimants, are discussed for the first time in the context of the established British honours system. Overall, the comparison between the socially very restricted British and the increasingly meritocratic Continental orders highlights the isolation of the British honours system from the European tendencies.