Gilbert and Sullivan well, and on 13 May 1883, at a party to celebrate the composer's 41st birthday, the guests, including the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), heard a direct relay of parts of "Iolanthe" from the Savoy. This was probably the first live "broadcast" of an opera. During the run of "Iolanthe", in 1883, Sullivan was knighted by Queen Victoria. Although it was the operas with Gilbert that had earned him the broadest fame, the honour was conferred for his services to serious music. The musical establishment, and many critics, believed that this should put an end to his career as
Cultural influence of Gilbert and Sullivan as background or imagining the lives of historical or fictional G&S performers. Recent examples include Cynthia Morey's novel about an amateur Gilbert and Sullivan company, "A World That's All Our Own" (2006); Bernard Lockett's "Here's a State of Things" (2007), a historical novel that intertwines the lives of two sets of London characters, a hundred years apart, but both connected with the Gilbert and Sullivan operas; and "The Last Moriarty" (2015) by Charles Veley, about an actress from D'Oyly Carte who seeks the help of Sherlock Holmes. "Secret Words" by Jonathan Strong uses a local production of "Utopia, Limited" as