UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
Honorary degrees awarded at Bristol University on Friday 13 July

Today, at its degree ceremonies, Bristol University is awarding Honorary degrees to two prominent national figures.

Miss Jane Asher, actress, novelist, journalist and businesswoman, is to receive the degree of Doctor of Laws at 11.15 am.

Jane Asher made her screen debut at the age of five and has starred in numerous plays, films and television and radio dramas.  She has been nominated three times for BAFTA Best Actress awards.  She has written books on cookery, entertaining and good living, as well as a great deal of journalism and two best-selling novels.  She runs a number of successful business ventures, including a cake shop in Chelsea.

She has served on many governing bodies, including the BBC General Advisory Council. She is involved in several charities and is President of the National Autistic Society.

Katie, eldest daughter of Jane and her husband, Gerald Scarfe, graduated from Bristol in 1995 and Jane has become a Patron of the Campaign for Resource.

Professor Barry Supple, CBE, Director of the Leverhulme Trust, will be honoured with the degree of Doctor of Letters at a ceremony at 2.30 pm.

Professor Supple studied at the London School of Economics, where he specialised in 16th- and 17th-century economic and social history.  His success as an undergraduate led him to a research studentship at Cambridge. His thesis, Commercial crisis and change in England 1600-42: a study on the instability of a mercantile economy was published in 1959.

From Cambridge he migrated to North America, first to Harvard as an assistant professor and then to McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

He returned to England in 1962 to take up the Chair of Economic and Social History at the University of Sussex, where he remained until 1978. During that time he was editor of the Economic History Review, the leading academic journal in the field.

Sussex was followed by Oxford and then, in 1981, Cambridge, where he was appointed to the Chair of Economic History.  He was elected Master of St Catherine's in 1983.

In 1993 he was appointed as Director of the Leverhulme Trust, which offers grants and fellowships in support of academic research.  Since his appointment the Trust's annual income has risen from £14 million to £30 million.

Last year in the Queen's New Years Honours list he was awarded a CBE for services to Economic History.

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Email: public-relations@bristol.ac.uk
Copyright: 2001 The University of Bristol, UK
Updated: Monday, 16-Jul-2001 08:45:14 BST