TWO unsung recipients of New Years’ honours are looking forward to their day in the sun at Buckingham Palace later this year.

Prison Service stalwart David Thompson, governor of top security Frankland Jail, near Durham City, received an OBE in the honours’ list.

Alan Godfrey, a successful publisher of old maps, was made an MBE in last week’s Queen’s awards.

Mr Thompson, a miner’s son from Thornley, County Durham, educated at nearby Wheatley Hill Secondary Modern School, joined the prison service in February, 1980. Initially a prison officer, he served at several establishments, including young offenders’ institutions and at Prison Service headquarters, moving up the promotion ladder to become governor of the country’s largest high-security dispersal prison.

His CV includes a sixyear stint as deputy governor of Durham Prison, and three years each as governor of nearby Low Newton Women’s Prison and governor of Wakefield Prison, in West Yorkshire.

Mr Thompson, who returned to Durham as Frankland governor in 2007, said: “When I was a child, my mother and father always paid attention to who received honours.

“They would never have believed that one day their son would be chosen to receive such an honour and I never dreamt that one day I would be among such a select list of people.”

Mr Thompson said the honours’ system was now “more open and fair, not reserved for the elite”.

The father-of-four is a keen golfer, a member of Seahouses club in Northumberland, and a football fan, following Sunderland at Premier League level, Esh Winning, in the Northern League, and one of his sons playing junior matches.

Mr Thompson thanked his family, friends and colleagues, who he said support him in a job, “that at times is quite stressful and challenging, but at the same time very much rewarding.”

Mr Godfrey, a lifelong lover of maps, made it his profession in 1981, when he began publishing old Ordnance Survey maps, no longer covered by copyright.

The Tyneside-born former actor and school peripatetic music and drama teacher, has now researched and produced 2,300 maps, covering the UK, and begins preparation of his first German pre-war maps, next week.

He said more than 50 per cent of his business is down to the family history boom, with London’s East End and parts of Liverpool the most popular.

Mr Godfrey, 66, of Holmside, near Sacriston, County Durham, moved the business to Leadgate in 2000.