BATTLE of Britain historian Dilip Sarkar is one of four local people to get awards in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Mr Sarkar, who has been a police beat officer in the Malvern area for the past 12 years, has written 17 books on various aspects of the Battle of Britain and its pilots.

He has now been made an MBE for his services to aviation history.

Mr Sarkar was nominated for the award by his wife Anita, Lady Bader, widow of Sir Douglas Bader, and Sir Alan Smith, who was Sir Douglas's wingman during the battle.

"I first heard about the MBE about six weeks ago and I honestly thought it was a wind-up," he said.

"I've just been on holiday at Scapa Floe, diving on the scuttled German fleet. Last Saturday, when the awards were announced, we were coming back and we stopped at a hotel in Aviemore. I saw a copy of the Times and I realised it wasn't a wind-up.

"I'm delighted, not only for myself, but for my children James, aged 11 and Hannah, eight. I'm just sorry my father is not here to see it."

Deryk Mead, chief executive of the children's charity NCH, has been made a CBE.

Mr Mead, formerly Gloucestershire's head of social services, has lived in Colwall for the last 12 years. He said: "It's a personal honour for me but it's a tribute to all the hard work and commitment of everyone at NCH."

Dr Jonathan Pritchard, of QinetiQ in Malvern, who gets the OBE, joined RSRE, as it was then, in 1972, as a scientist working on satellite communications. He built the first X-band satellite radio to fit in an attach case and leads a team recognised for its excellence in computer-assisted image manipulation.

Maurice Reynolds, who was made an MBE, was born in Upton, but moved away at the age of six and has only recently returned to the area.

He founded a chain of nursing homes in the Northampton area, where he has specialised in caring for people with the rare genetic disorder Prader-Willi Syndrome.