An East Molesey man seriously ill with cancer has had his spirits lifted with news he has been made an MBE.

Jonathan Horne, 70, who lives in Matham Road, has been rewarded for his services to English ceramics in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours.

However, due to the cancer he was diagnosed with nearly four years ago, he will not be able to collect the award personally.

Mr Horne was too unwell to speak to the Elmbridge Guardian this week, but his wife Rachel, who is nursing him at home, said she hoped something could be organised so he could wear the medal on his pyjamas in bed.

She said: “I feel very proud of him. He has worked so hard for this and it is such an achievement. Receiving the MBE has cheered him up and got him through a lot of this.”

Mr Horne, who moved to East Molesey in 1976 and has three children, became passionate about ceramics while still at school.

He was founding editor of the Kent Archaeological Review and, while there, published important finds from Roman and early British excavation sites.

During this time, his own interest was drawn to what a lot of other archaeologists dismissed as “post-medieval” pottery from the 17th and 18th century.

He opened his own stall in Portobello Road in the 1960s, where he specialised in dealing early British pottery, and opened a shop in Kensington in the 1980, the same year he held his first exhibition of his best discoveries.

He was elected chairman of British Antique Dealers’ Association in 2001.