New appointments to The Order of The Thistle

The Queen has been graciously pleased to make the following appointments to the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle:

The Right Honourable Dame Elish Angiolini

The Right Honourable Sir George Reid

Notes for Editors:

Appointments to the Order of the Thistle are entirely in the personal gift of The Queen ( i.e. without Prime Ministerial advice).

The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle represents the highest honour in Scotland.  Revived by King James VII, the Order has a complement of 16 Knights (KT).

Dame Elish Angiolini

The Right Honourable Dame Elish Angiolini QC ( born 24th June 1960) is a Scottish lawyer who was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011.  Dame Elish served as Lord Advocate of Scotland between 2006 and 2011 as the first woman to hold the post and was also the first woman to hold the role of Solicitor General of Scotland, between 2001 and 2006.  Dame Elish has led multiple government inquiries, and in November 2021 it was announced that she would head up the independent inquiry into the murder of Sarah Everard.

Since 2012, Dame Elish has served as Principal of St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford and Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University since 2017. She holds a visiting professorship at the University of Strathclyde, an honorary professorship at the University of Aberdeen and served as Chancellor of the University of the West of Scotland for eight years.

Sir George Reid

The Right Honourable Sir George Reid (born 4th June 1939) is a Scottish politician, international aid director and academic.  He was knighted in 2012 for services to Scottish politics and public life.  He is currently a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Professorial Teaching Fellow at the University of Stirling.

In 2008 Sir George was appointed Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and then served as Lord Lieutenant of Clackmannanshire from 2011 to 2014.  He was elected Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament in 2003, following his elections as MSP for Ochil that year, for Mid-Scotland and Fife in 1999 and as MP for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire in 1974.

Between Westminster and Holyrood, Sir George worked for 14 years in disasters and conflicts worldwide as Director of Public Affairs of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva and as Director of the Global Campaign for the Victims of War. Since retirement from politics, he has been appointed an Electoral Commissioner and has chaired governance reviews in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Parliament and of the National Trust for Scotland. 

The appointments are effective from Friday 10th June, 2022.