Inside David Beckham’s 20-year campaign for a knighthood

King Charles meets David Beckham, who has received a knighthood after years of royal connections and public charity work. Photo / Getty Images

When David Beckham attended the Chelsea Flower Show last month, his conversation with King Charles raised the eyebrows of regular royal watchers. Beckham, who was wearing a new rose named in the King’s honour, had just turned 50 and it seemed the monarch had bought the former England captain a present.

“You got it, didn’t you?” Charles was overheard saying, with Beckham replying: “It was incredible, thank you. It was very kind.”

Now it seems that Beckham has received the gift he treasured above all others – a knighthood. Receiving the ultimate accolade from the British establishment has been very much a crusade for Beckham for the past 15 years, one in which he has successfully cultivated friendships within the royal family alongside a remarkably effective public relations campaign.

How much a knighthood means to him is clear from emails written more than a decade ago, before being hacked and leaked in 2017, which show Beckham was clearly furious over his wait to be knighted.

“They r [sic] a bunch of c***s,” Beckham allegedly wrote about the honours committee. “Who decides on the honors [sic]?? It’s a disgrace to be honest and if I was American I would have got something like this 10 years ago.” Another message read: “Unless it’s a knighthood, f*** off.”

Beckham’s representatives said the emails, which included one railing against Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins getting an OBE in 2014 after previously admitting taking drugs, had been “doctored” and “taken out of context”. But his quest to become “Sir David” has nevertheless been a long one, and it is one in which the royals loom large.

Loos scandal did little harm to brand

It is 22 years since Beckham was made an OBE for services to football, an honour which in itself was remarkable considering there had been effigies hung of him just five years previously after his red card at the 1998 World Cup.

By that point he had begun the charity work that has undoubtedly proven crucial to him becoming the youngest former footballer to be knighted, having supported Unicef while playing for Manchester United. Accusations that he cheated on wife Victoria with Rebecca Loos after quitting United for Real Madrid, which he denied, had a limited impact on Brand Beckham and, by 2005, he had become a Unicef goodwill ambassador.

That same year he was part of the delegation Britain dispatched to Singapore in a bid to secure the 2012 Olympics for London. The stunning success of that bid is said to have been behind him first being put forward for a knighthood in 2011 before he had even retired from playing. But any plans to award him the honour were vetoed when he was caught up in a tax avoidance scheme.

It was a bid for sport’s other mega-event that allowed him to cement a close bond with the current Prince of Wales. The two were united as the figureheads of England’s unsuccessful bid for the 2018 World Cup, and their rapport was evident in October when they greeted each other like old friends at an official engagement to celebrate the replacement of London’s ageing air ambulance helicopters.

At that stage, though, it seemed that if Beckham were to be honoured it would be for his charity work, with the midfielder giving away the wages he earned at Paris St-Germain, his final club. There was some cynicism even then, with the leak of Beckham’s hacked messages forcing him to deny claims he had used his children’s charity work as part of a campaign to win a knighthood. He was also furious that the messages depicted him as demanding money from Unicef – with which he established the “7 Fund” in 2015 – to pay for flights and hotels to visit its projects.

Unicef came to the star’s defence, describing Beckham “as generously giving his time, energy and support to help raise awareness and funds for Unicef’s work for children”. It said: “David has given significant funds personally. The 7 Fund supports programmes for children, tackling issues such as malnutrition, violence, Aids and emergencies.”

It would not be the last time Beckham would come under fire for his off-field choices. In 2021, he was criticised for signing a 10-year, reported £150 million deal to become an ambassador for Qatar in the build-up to the last World Cup. His promotion of a country with a poor human rights record – and where the death penalty can apply to those found to be in same-sex relationships – sparked a major backlash. Comedian Joe Lycett famously shredded what appeared to be £10,000 (it later turned out not to be real cash) along with Beckham’s “status as a gay icon”. Beckham later said he was “proud” of his role and that the World Cup had been the “safest” for the LGBTQ community “for a long time”.

Helped by falling out with Harry and Meghan

In hindsight, the more significant event of 2021 was the fact he was cleared by the tax authorities to receive an upgrade to his OBE. That opened the path to his knighthood, and it was one Beckham duly followed as his interactions with the royal family accelerated.

He was helped by the fact that, just like Charles and William, he had fallen out with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Beckham had previously been close with both princes and their wives, and attended their weddings. But when Beckham flew to Australia in October 2018 to help promote Prince Harry’s Invictus Games in Sydney, he is said to have been snubbed by the Sussexes, who allegedly went to great lengths to avoid being photographed alongside him. It has since been claimed that Meghan believed Victoria Beckham had leaked stories about her to the press. The suggestion was strongly refuted.

When Prince Harry and Meghan became estranged from the royal family and started giving interviews loaded with private family revelations and allegations, the Beckhams were said to be less than impressed. If sides were being picked, David knew where his loyalties lay. Indeed, Beckham’s painful estrangement from eldest son Brooklyn amid a family feud involving daughter-in-law Nicola Peltz has echoes of the breakdown of the King’s relationship with Prince Harry since his son and Meghan quit as working royals to live in the United States. There, they have reportedly mixed in the same circles as Brooklyn and Nicola.

Arguably, though, nothing helped Beckham’s cause more than when he queued up for 13 hours to pay his respects to Queen Elizabeth II following her death in September 2022. While some celebrities infamously jumped the queue, Beckham joined the estimated quarter of a million people who patiently waited their turn. Beckham, who had been awarded his OBE by the late Queen, told the BBC: “I was so lucky that I was able to have a few moments like that in my life, to be around Her Majesty.”

But it is Beckham’s remarkable relationship with the King that may well have put the seal on his impending knighthood. What has blossomed into a love-in began in earnest shortly after the coronation, when Beckham, who had discovered a love of beekeeping during the coronavirus crisis, gave the King a jar of home-produced honey – D Bee’z Sticky Stuff – at an awards ceremony in London celebrating British fashion. The gesture landed well. The King, who has long kept bees at his royal estates and harbours a genuine love for different types of honey, thanked him and said: “We shall have to do a swap.”

Beckham admitted at the time that he was “excited” to meet the King, describing himself as a lifelong admirer of the royal family. As a child, he is said to have made an annual pilgrimage to Buckingham Palace with his grandparents, Joseph and Peggy, to watch Trooping the Colour.

He spoke of his hitherto unknown passion for nature in 2023’s candid Netflix documentary about his life, chatting about the bees he kept on his Cotswolds estate near Great Tew in Oxfordshire. Just a few months later, in June 2024, there he was swapping beekeeping tips with the King.

The pair met up privately at the monarch’s Highgrove home, some 80km from the Beckhams’ residence, to discuss plans for him to become an ambassador for the King’s Foundation. Pictures released to mark the announcement shortly afterwards showed them laughing together on the King’s doorstep, dressed in their smart country attire. “Having developed a love for the countryside, I’m also on a personal mission to learn more about rural skills which is so central to the foundation’s work,” Beckham said at the time. “It was inspiring to hear from the King about the work of His Majesty’s foundation during my recent visit to Highgrove Gardens – and compare beekeeping tips!”

It must also be said that the friendship is by no means a one-way street. The King’s Foundation has gone to great lengths to attract an array of high-profile personalities to become ambassadors in recent months. From Sienna Miller to rugby star Maro Itoje – the latest recruit, announced on Friday – the charity is keen to reach as wide a demographic as possible in its efforts to promote the synergy between people and planet. Beckham, one of the world’s most recognised figures, was a great catch and the invitations then came thick and fast.

In December, David and his wife joined the King and Queen at a state banquet at Buckingham Palace, held in honour of the Qatari ruler. In February, the couple were among the King’s guests at a black-tie dinner at Highgrove to celebrate Anglo-Italian relations and, the following month, Victoria was invited to Buckingham Palace for a Women of the World event hosted by the Queen.

Then, last month, the Princess of Wales wore a Victoria Beckham suit during a visit to the British Fashion Council – not the first time she had been spotted in one of the former Spice Girl’s designs. That was followed shortly afterwards by the visit to the Chelsea Flower Show and the King’s “gift” to Beckham.

Whether the gift itself was the knighthood few will know, but no one can dispute that Beckham’s hard work has finally earned him the one royal seal of approval he has always craved.