Companions of Literature
The title ‘Companion of Literature’ – the highest award bestowed by the RSL – was inaugurated in 1961, and is held by up to 12 writers at any one time.
The honour is currently held by those in bold below.
Recipients
1961
Sir Winston Churchill
E.M. Forster
John Masefield
W. Somerset Maugham
G.M. Trevelyan
1962
Edmund Blunden
Aldous Huxley
1963
Dame Edith Sitwell
Evelyn Waugh
1964
Elizabeth Bowen
Cecil Day-Lewis
1967
Sir Osbert Sitwell
1968
Sir John Betjeman
Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett
Sir Compton Mackenzie
Dame Rebecca West
1972
Lord David Cecil
Cyril Connolly
L.P. Hartley
Sir Angus Wilson
1974
Ruth Pitter
Lord Clark
Arthur Koestler
1978
Philip Larkin
David Garnett
Sir Stephen Spender
1983
Samuel Beckett
William Golding
Graham Greene
1987
Rosamund Lehmann
Dame Iris Murdoch
Sir Victor Pritchett
The Hon Sir Steven Runciman
1991
Anthony Burgess
Seamus Heaney
Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor
Dame Muriel Spark
1994
Sybille Bedford
V.S. Naipaul
William Trevor
1998
D.J. Enright
Harold Pinter
2001
Charles Causley
Doris Lessing
2004
Sir Michael Holroyd
Sir Tom Stoppard
2007
Michael Frayn
Peter Porter
2012
Brian Friel
Margaret Atwood
Alice Munro
