But the biggest award to the acting profession is a knighthood for Nigel Hawthorne, best known as the supremely suave and cunning civil servant in Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister and, on stage and screen, as George III in The Madness of King George.Andrew Davis, who has become a familiar figure on television, conducting the Last Night of the Proms, also receives a knighthood.The world of the visual arts sees two of its best-known ambassadors honoured. The 59-year-old singer, best remembered for her husky voice, kitsch blonde image and heavy black eye make-up, is seriously ill with breast cancer. She issued a statement saying: "I'm deeply and genuinely honoured. There is no known antidote and the spread of the beetle can only be achieved by felling trees.The beetle is about an inch long (2.5cm) and has a shiny black covering. Its most distinctive feature is its long horn-shaped feelers, which are black with white rings.The United States has already imposed a rigorous exclusion regime.. THE SIXTIES reverberated through the honours list as the singers Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones were joined by the artist Bridget Riley Dusty Springfield's OBE will prove highly popular. China will be given until 15 February to comply with the new rules.Roddie Burgess, head of Forestry Commission's plant health service, said: "We know that the beetle would survive in most of the country, and that it would cause economic damage, not just to our forests and woodlands but also, possibly to fruit-growers."The problem with the Asian longhorn beetle - Anoplophora glabripebbis - is that once it becomes embedded in trees it kills them very fast.

The insect will be included on a list of prohibited pests - and wood packaging, which carries the bulk of Chinese exports to Britain, will have to be both bark and grub- hole free. The threat emerged after the beetle was found in wooden packing cases containing Chinese imports. They in turn called Terry Confield, leader of the Lochaber mountain rescue team and a friend of her husband.Mr Wild had left details of his route and itinerary and the team were able to use the gondola ski-lift system of the Nevis Range to get 30 of the rescue party to the site in about an hour.As well as the Lochaber team, RAF mountain rescue teams came from Kinloss, near Fife, and Leeming in North Yorkshire. When he failed to do so by 9.30pm his wife, Fiona, contacted the police. Unable to move for an hour, she breathed through her hand, which she had clamped over her mouth to prevent choking by the snow.Mr Wild should have returned home by late Tuesday afternoon. The reason some of them did, according to experts, is because they managed to dig airholes in the snow that was covering them.They may also have used the emergency procedures climbers are taught for such situations, adopting a swimming motion to help to propel the body upwards.One of the group, Sarah Finch, later told rescuers that she saved herself by frantically clearing the snow from her mouth and nose as the avalanche hit. The experience must have been terrifying, say mountaineers, with the climbers hearing a roar before being engulfed by cascading snow and ice with no hope of escape.They should all have perished.

No one can recall anybody having survived such an avalanche in the Scottish Highlands. THE GOVERNMENT is taking action to prevent the spread of the Asian longhorn beetle which poses a lethal threat to hardwood trees, such as sycamore, horse chestnut, willow and poplar. The Yorkshire team had been on snow training in the area when they were alerted. He was not likely, for example, to take part in a discussion of fishing quotas given the option of looking at a Poussin. (Once, when he did look at a Poussin in a Bond Street gallery, he politely interrupted the gallery owner's detailed account of the painting to reinterpret its entire mythology.)His interest in European culture, and in particular the art and architecture of Rome, Florence, Venice and Paris, was passionate; he had limited affection for London and showed a marked reluctance to cross the river. He collected pictures and also commissioned them, notably an ongoing series of portraits of his daughter, Stella, by Matthew Carr.Though he often seemed happiest with his own company, Powell-Jones revelled in companionship, even encouraged a Dionysian streak in others, though he could at times be an enervating and forbidding presence.

Easily irritated by what he perceived as an oafish element in many English men, he was strongly drawn to the company of women and was capable of developing tendresses at speed. An endearing feature was his ability to communicate freely, when he chose, with absolutely anyone.The gifts of penetrative intelligence and pure intellect which enabled him to maintain an envied status at the Bar, where he specialised in Chancery work, were marred by a tendency to erratic behaviour, often associated with drink, which became steadily more prevalent and ended by disrupting both his professional and his domestic life.He accepted all consequent changes of status with dignity and retired last year to York to work on a verse translation of Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman. He rediscovered the pleasures of research, establishing himself in the basement of the Brotherton Library, Leeds, where the essential Russian lexicon lived. He completed the translation of this and other Pushkin poems, also a short story, and arranged for their publication before his death from a heart attack. They will appear next year.William JollRobert James Powell-Jones, barrister: born London 6 January 1954; called to the Bar, Middle Temple 1978; married 1980 Flora Fraser (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1992); died York 17 December 1998..