OSCAR-WINNING ACTRESS Dame Judi Dench was yesterday honoured by St Andrews University in recognition of her contribution to the performing arts.

She said, “It was a huge surprise and I feel very excited about it—it is a very, very great honour.”

She admitted to being “embarrassed” as her many honours were related to a packed audience in the Younger Hall.

Praised by Professor Lorna Hutson, of the School of English, for her “exceptional ability to access and interpret the extremes of human emotion,” she was conferred with an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

No stranger to honours and award ceremonies, in 1970 she received an OBE, in 1988 became Dame Commander of the British Empire and in 2005 was named a Companion of Honour. She is also an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and has an honorary doctorate from Durham University.

Dame Judi has won numerous awards for her work in the theatre, film and television, including six Lawrence Olivier awards, three Critics’ Circle prizes, one Tony, nine BAFTAs, an Oscar and six Oscar nominations, as well as two Golden Globes.

In her address, Professor Hutson said, “To list these official recognitions of Dame Judi’s immense talent, energy and distinction is to give only the outline of the picture.”

During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Dame Judi played seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Nottingham Playhouse, the Oxford Playhouse and the National Theatre in roles ranging from Dol Common in Jonson’s Alchemist to Saint Joan in Shaw and from Sally Bowles in Cabaret to Millamant in Congreve’s The Way Of The World or Mother Courage in Brecht.

She achieved international fame in the mid-1990s after taking on the role of James Bond’s boss, M.

In 1996 Dame Judi became the first person to win two Olivier awards for different roles in the same year—as Desirie Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music and as Christine Foskett in Rodney Ackland’s Absolute Hell.

Professor Hutson said, “Judi Dench has always preferred the ‘company spirit’ of theatre and the contingency and challenge of live performance to what she has called the ‘curious business’ of film acting in which everything is ‘preserved in aspic’.”

Nevertheless, the actress admits that the shooting of John Madden’s Mrs Brown in 1996 was something of an exception—something more like theatre.

Professor Hutson concluded, “Judi Dench has often spoken of the interpretative challenge of a role—of how this or that line of text or moment of insight ‘unlocked’ the enigma of the part for her.

“It is her exceptional power of communicating this interpretation—making a role emotionally intelligible—that enables her to bring the words of great dramatists, novelists and writers from different and distant places, cultures and eras, to renewed life and meaning for our times and for us.”

At the same ceremony, the leading pharmaceutical scientist Dr Simon Campbell received an honorary degree of doctor of science in recognition of his contribution to the discovery of new medicines, promoting health care in the developing world and promoting the chemical sciences.

One of the world’s most successful pharmaceutical chemists, he was senior vice-president for world-wide discovery at phar-maceutical giant, Pfizer when he retired in 1998.

Since then he has been involved in national and international leadership roles in the promotion of the chemical sciences, and in seeking innovative new medicines for the developed and developing world.

He joined Pfizer Central Research in 1972 at their labs in Kent, and while there was involved with or led research teams that developed and brought three important medicines to the market.

Dr Campbell was first involved in the discovery of Cardura, a drug that is used in the treatment of high blood pressure and benign prostrate enlargement.

His second drug was Istin, which is an effective treatment for angina and hypertension and which, as a consequence, became a true blockbuster.

In 1985, he led the programme that developed Viagra, which was eventually marketed in 1998.

Professor David O’Hagan of the School of Chemistry, said, “We have in our midst an outstanding scientist—a man whose contributions have saved many lives, prolonged many lives and enhanced many lives.”

Dr Campbell was the founding chairman of the Science Advisory Committee to the Medicines for Malaria Venture—a position he held from 1999 to 2003—he was president of the Royal Society of Chemistry from 2004 to 2006, is a Fellow of the Royal Society and, in 2006, was awarded a CBE for services to science.

He presently serves on the scientific advisory board of numerous technology-based companies in Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia, and also advises several charitable organisations, including The Wellcome Trust and Cancer UK.