Patrick Stewart, Peter Jackson Receive Knighthood from Queen

Nowadays potential recipients are contacted by Downing Street to confirm in writing whether or not they wish to be put forward for an honour well before any public announcement is made. Therefore those who now decline an honour when it is announced have already indicated acceptance beforehand.

Some potential recipients have rejected one honour then accepted another one (such as Sir Alfred Hitchcock), or have initially refused an honour then accepted it, or have accepted one honour then declined another (such as Vanessa Redgrave), or refused in the hopes of another - (Roald Dahl was offered an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, or OBE, but refused because he wanted a knighthood so that his wife would be Lady Dahl).

This often has as much to do with the political party in power as anything else, since honours can be construed as being political rewards. Sometimes a potential recipient will refuse a knighthood or peerage, but will accept an honour that does not carry a title, such as the Order of Merit (OM) or Order of the Companions of Honour (CH); Bertrand Russell, Paul Scofield, Doris Lessing, Harold Pinter, David Hockney, Florence Nightingale, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Augustus John and Francis Crick are famous examples).

Many modern examples were identified in December 2003 when a confidential document containing over 300 names of such people was leaked to The Sunday Times.