By Livia Kenton-Harris
PENHA’s patron and UK national treasure Joanna Lumley has been awarded a damehood in the Queen’s New Year Honours List for her contribution to entertainment and the dramatic arts as well as her commitment to charity, having been awarded an OBE in 1995. Most famous for her award-winning role as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous and Purdey in The New Avengers, she also features in a multitude of Hollywood movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Paddington 2.
Alongside her stardom, Joanna is a fierce advocate of human and animal rights and supports many charities. She became PENHA’s patron in 2009, after having met PENHA’s founder, Dr Zeremariam Fre whilst filming in Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1994. Joanna has been a proactive and generous supporter of PENHA, attending many fundraising events and expressing her enchantment of pastoralists and of the Horn of Africa.
Despite her fame, Joanna’s modesty endures. In an interview with the BBC regarding her damehood, she calls her newly appointed title ‘extraordinary’ and ‘completely unexpected’ and humorously states when the ‘formal’ and ‘confidential’ letter arrived she thought ‘what have I done wrong?’. Along with her humour, her humility is also apparent, as she modestly questions ‘is it a mistake?’ Joanna Lumley’s passion and commitment to PENHA’s work certainly endorses this new honour.
