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
Ralph Vaughan Williams services to chamber music (1930); the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society (1930); the Collard life fellowship of the Worshipful Company of Musicians (1934, in succession to Elgar); an honorary fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge (1935); the Shakespeare prize of the University of Hamburg (1937); the Albert medal of the Royal Society of Arts (1955); and the Howland memorial prize of Yale University (1954). At the time of his death Vaughan Williams was President of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, who renamed their library the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library in his honour. After Vaughan Williams's death, "The