Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the context of "Steve Ovett"

Sir Antony Mark David Gormley CH OBE RA (born 30 August 1950) is a British sculptor. His works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool; and Event Horizon, a multipart site installation which premiered in London in 2007, then subsequently in Madison Square in New York City (2010), São Paulo (2012) and Hong Kong (2015–16).

Michael George Francis Ventris, OBE (/ˈvɛntrɪs/; 12 July 1922 – 6 September 1956) was an English architect, classicist and philologist who deciphered Linear B, the ancient Mycenaean Greek script. A student of languages, Ventris had pursued decipherment as a personal vocation since his adolescence. After creating a new field of study, Ventris died in a car crash a few weeks before the publication of Documents in Mycenaean Greek, written with John Chadwick.

John Maler Collier OBE ROI RP (/ˈkɒliər/; 27 January 1850 – 11 April 1934) was an English painter and writer. He painted in the Pre-Raphaelite style, and was one of the most prominent portrait painters of his generation. Both of his marriages were to daughters of Thomas Henry Huxley. He was educated at Eton College, and he studied painting in Paris with Jean-Paul Laurens and at the Munich Academy starting in 1875.

John Langshaw Austin OBE FBA (26 March 1911 – 8 February 1960) was an English philosopher of language and leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy, best known for developing the theory of speech acts.

Austin pointed out that we use language to do things as well as to assert things, and that the utterance of a statement like "I promise to do so-and-so" is best understood as doing something—here, making a promise—rather than making an assertion about anything; hence the title of one of his best-known works, How to Do Things with Words (1955).

David Crystal, OBE, FBA, FLSW, FCIL (born 6 July 1941) is a British linguist who studies the English language.

Crystal studied English at University College London and has lectured at Bangor University and the University of Reading. He was awarded an OBE in 1995 and a Fellowship of the British Academy in 2000. Crystal was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Lancaster University in 2013. Crystal is a proponent of Internet linguistics and has also been involved in Shakespeare productions, providing guidance on original pronunciation.

Margaret Ann Boden OBE FBA (26 November 1936 – 18 July 2025) was a British academic. She was a research professor of cognitive science in the department of informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraced the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.

Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival, CB, DSO & Bar, OBE, MC, DL (26 December 1887 – 31 January 1966) was a British Army officer. He saw service in the First World War and built a successful military career during the interwar period, but is best known for his defeat in the Second World War, when Percival commanded British Commonwealth forces during the Malayan campaign, which culminated in a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Singapore.

Percival's surrender to the invading Imperial Japanese Army, which was the largest of its kind in British military history, significantly undermined Britain's prestige and military position in East Asia. Some historians, such as Sir John Smyth, have argued that under-funding of British Malaya's defences and the inexperienced, under-equipped nature of the Commonwealth forces in Malaya, not Percival's leadership, were ultimately to blame for the defeat.

Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist, and satirist, best known for the Discworld series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983 and 2015, and for the apocalyptic comedy novel Good Omens (1990), which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman.

Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971. The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983, after which Pratchett wrote an average of two books a year. The final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, was published in August 2015, five months after his death.

Alan McCrae Moorehead, AO, OBE (22 July 1910 – 29 September 1983) was a war correspondent and author of popular histories, most notably two books on the nineteenth-century exploration of the Nile, The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962). Australian-born, he lived in England, and Italy, from 1937.