Wendover man shares delight at meeting King Charles III after being awarded a CBE for animal welfare work

A Wendover man has shared details of his special day being honoured with a CBE at Windsor Castle.

Anthony Martin who lives in Wendover was recognised in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Honours List and received his award last month.

He told The Bucks Herald: “It was fantastic. I was in the last event that Queen Elizabeth gave, her jubilee honours list.

"It was a true honour to be given it by one royal and to receive it from another one.”

Anthony recently retired, but prior to that he was chairman of a global recruitment company based in the UK.

But his royal honour was granted in recognition of the work he has done influencing international laws to protect animals.

He set up the Anthony V Martin Foundation in 2001. The welfare charity started out helping wildlife causes in the UK, but has evolved to take on bigger international causes.

One of the charity’s proudest achievements was contributing to the ending, of the consumption of cats and dogs in China. Where there has been a clampdown on that activity in recent years, as well as a full-scale ban in the city, Shenzhen.

Anthony has a team of people travelling through China making sure cats and dogs are no longer being sold as food. He believes the charity has saved the lives of millions of cats in the gigantic nation.

Anthony and his team also campaigned against bear bile farming in Vietnam, and exposes trophy hunting throughout Asia.

Currently, he is working to expose alleged killing of dogs in Morocco, which he believes is linked to the African country’s attempts to become a World Cup host nation.

Anthony added: “I was born just before the Second World War started. And there’s no connection between those two events.

“I was evacuated to a farm in Essex and then grew to love animals there. They were the only living things around.”

King Charles III showed a great interest in Anthony’s welfare work. Anthony said: “We actually had a long chat. Staff were standing around giggling, because he doesn’t normally spend that much time, apparently. Some of it is confidential, but we did talk about animal welfare.”