Ralph Vaughan Williams after Boult, Sargent and Barbirolli are Vernon Handley, Richard Hickox, Sir Mark Elder and Sir Andrew Davis. Record companies with extensive lists of Vaughan Williams recordings include EMI, Decca, Chandos, Hyperion and Naxos. Vaughan Williams refused a knighthood at least once, and declined the post of Master of the King's Music after Elgar's death. The one state honour he accepted was the Order of Merit in 1935, which confers no prenominal title: he preferred to remain "Dr Vaughan Williams". His academic and musical honours included an honorary doctorate of music from the University of Oxford (1919); the Cobbett medal for
Ursula Vaughan Williams played by Frances de la Tour. Until her death in London at age 96, she was honorary president of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. She was also the president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Her funeral was held at St John's Wood Church. Ursula Vaughan Williams Joan Ursula Penton Vaughan Williams (née Lock; 15 March 1911 – 23 October 2007) was an English poet and author, and biographer of her second husband, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Born in Valletta, Malta, the daughter of Major-General Sir Robert Lock and his wife Kathleen Beryl Penton, daughter of Arthur