St Andrews University has honoured one of Britain’s most loved comedians at a graduation ceremony.
Terry Jones, a member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters in front of scores of International Relations graduates on Tuesday.
Dr Chris Jones, who presented the honorary degree, said: “Monty Python changed British society fundamentally forever with its irreverent, anarchically surreal and iconoclastically anti-authoritarian humour that has given us so many catchphrases and images, now engrained in our culture.
“Python is sometimes said to be to comedy what the Beatles were to pop music, and Jones is acknowledged, by the other members of the group, to be at the very heart of Monty Python.”
Alongside his television success, Mr Jones has also had a successful career as a writer, penning a revolutionary reanalysis of Chaucer’s A Knights Tale, as well as The War on the War on Terror, a collection of articles attacking US intervention in the Middle East.
Professor Christopher Brown CBE, an art historian, was also given an honorary degree at the ceremony.
Professor Brown transformed the Ashmolean museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford, while also being renowned as an expert on 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art.
Presenting the honorary degree, Art History Professor Brendan Cassidy, said: “Christopher Brown has been honoured for his outstanding contribution to British cultural life and to scholarship.
“He is not only one of the most distinguished and successful museum directors of his generation but also the pre-eminent British authority on Dutch and Flemish art of the 17th century.”