Judith Weir her appointment as the Master of the Queen's Music, succeeding Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (whose term of office expired in March 2014), would be announced; this was officially confirmed on 21 July. In May 2015, Weir won The Ivors Classical Music Award at the Ivor Novello Awards. Weir is a member of the Incorporated Society of Musicians. In 2018 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Weir's musical language is fairly conservative, with a "knack of making simple musical ideas appear freshly mysterious." Her first stage work, "The Black Spider", was a one-act opera which
Last Post (poem) soldiers. Carol Ann Duffy was appointed as Poet Laureate in May 2009, the first woman to be appointed to the post. She was asked by the BBC Radio 4 programme "Today" to write a poem to mark the deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch. The poem was read by Duffy on "Today" on 30 July 2009, the day of Allingham's funeral. Allingham, who served with the Royal Naval Air Service before becoming a founder member of the Royal Air Force, died on 18 July 2009 at the age of 113; Patch, the last surviving man to have fought in