13 NOVEMBER 1993, Page 26

Honoris Civitatis causa

THIS IS THE City's cue to promote its own honours list, and to honour its own worthies. The new Lord Mayor, whose theme is the international City, would want to honour those who have come from other countries to help make it so. They are among its leading citizens in all but name. They should be its freemen. The City, indeed, should have a whole spectrum of honours, each with its outward and visible badge — what Harold Macmillan, that master of patronage, called something to wear under the tie — for at a Mansion House dinner, nothing is so naked as an unadorned shirt-front. A useful new hon- orific would be Lord Mayor Emeritus,

which, conferred on retiremerr . would save Paul Newall from slipping hack to Alder- man or even Mister. As for myself, I proffer my proposals for the City's good and I seek no reward, but he may care to know that for a tin star I wouldn't mind being a deputy sheriff.