Deborah Bull gains a CBE for her services to dance, confounds all the prejudices about prima ballerinas: quick, articulate and outspoken, she has emerged as a passionate spokeswoman in a field where the majority are deemed beautiful but vacant.

A Royal Ballet member since 1981, and principal dancer since 1992, she sprang to the general public's attention when she wiped the floor of the Oxford Union by defending lottery funding of "elitist" arts in 1996.

Lord Gowrie, her debating partner, described it as "the best speech I have heard on the arts in 30 years". She has since written extensively for broadsheets, published two books (the second an account of the recent tumults at the Royal Opera House), and become a member of the Arts Council and board of the South Bank Centre.

The youngest of four daughters of a Derby vicar, Ms Bull, 37, trained at the Royal Ballet School, where she was the only student in her year to take an A-level (French, which she crammed in a year). She has since been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Derby for "her cogent public advocacy of the place of the arts".