The wife of a former Yachting Monthly cartoonist has been awarded the MBE in the New Year’s Honours List.

Novelist Kathleen Wendy Herald Peyton, better known as Mrs Mike Peyton received the gong, one of 468 awarded in the MBE category, for services to Children’s Literature.
 
Kath Peyton, writing under the name K M Peyton, produced the hugely successful Flambards series of stories, about spirited young horse-riding teenagers, which was made into a television series by Yorkshire TV.

More than 50 per cent of honours were taken by women this year. Kath lives with Mike in Essex and is halfway through her 69th novel.

‘It makes a change for Mike to be in the background for once,’ Kath told YM, ‘normally, even at literary events, people say “Oh, you’re the wife of that cartoonist aren’t you?”!’

* Keith Musto, boss of the foulie manufacturers, was awarded the OBE for services to industry.