It has been a long and winding road to David Beckham’s knighthood – one marked by hurdles, sweary emails, fights with the taxman and an ever-closer relationship between the former England captain and the royal family.
David and Victoria Beckhamattended the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The former Spice Girls singer was six months pregnant with her fourth child, and photographers captured the moment when her husband rested a hand on his wife’s bump and grinned.
Beckham wasappointed an OBE for services to football in June 2003in the late queen’s birthday honours list. “This is just an amazing day,” he said afterwards. The queen was a football fan, said Beckham at the time. “I know Her Majesty is a football fan because when I was at a Number 10 reception, the prime minister told me he had watched a World Cup game on television with the queen and William and Harry.”
Also in 2013, Beckham was named as one of the many celebrities allegedly caught up in Ingenious financing schemes, which funded films such as Avatar and Life of Pi. In June 2017,more than 1,000 people, including Beckham and other celebritiessuch as Gary Lineker and Wayne Rooney, lose a court battle against a £700m tax bill from HM Revenue and Customs, after it successfully argued such schemes were not legitimate investment opportunities but a means of avoiding tax.
Sources close to Beckham at the time reportedly said the former footballer had no knowledge of the scheme. Ingenious wassuccessful in appealing against HMRCin 2021.
Despite an injunction,multiple European newspapers leaked emailswritten by Beckham in which he expressed anger – in rather spicy terms – at not being granted a knighthood in 2013. Emails between Beckham and his spokesperson Simon Oliveira refer to a “red flag” HMRC had put on his nomination for a knighthood.
Among the choice phrases was Beckham’s labelling of the honours committee as “a bunch of cunts”. Beckham’s team said the emails had been doctored by hackers, including the insertion of extra swearwords, but they confirmed others as genuine, including his insult about the honours committee. They stressed such emails were heat-of-the-moment communications between close associates.
The Beckhams attended Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding alongside a slew of celebrities including Serena Williams, Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney.
Beckham queued for 13 hours to see the late Queen Elizabeth’s coffin at Westminster Abbey in September 2022, saying it was “special to be here”. He added: “Every time that we stood there when we wore those three lions shirts and I had my armband and we sang God Save the Queen, that was something that meant so much to us. Every time that we did it, it was something special.”
Also in 2022, Beckham, who also played a key role in England’s 2018 World Cup bid,faced backlash for accepting the ambassadorshipat the Qatar World Cup in 2022. A deal with the Gulf state – which has oppressive laws against same-sex relationships – was said to be worth £150m. Beckham took part in a promotional film for Visit Qatar in which he spoke of Qataris’ pride in their culture. “The modern and traditional fuse to create something really special,” he said.
The Beckhams attended a banquet to mark the state visit of the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, hosted by King Charles and Queen Camilla at Buckingham Palace. Friends said he was “humbled” by his invitation and “very happy” to be there.
In an interview with 60 Minutes Australia,Beckham’s former PA Rebecca Loos repeated that she had had a short affair with the former footballer in 2003. Beckham has always denied the affair, calling the idea “ludicrous”. In the 2023 Netflix documentary Beckham, he said: “I don’t know how we got through it, in all honesty. Victoria is everything to me. To see her hurt was incredibly difficult … We needed to fight for each other and for our family. What we had was worth fighting for.”
Also in 2025, Beckham chatted to the king and queen at the Chelsea flower show, which he attended as part of his role as ambassador to the King’s Foundation. According to his website, Beckham supports its education programmes and “efforts to ensure young people have a greater understanding of nature”.
The former footballer turned model has spoken about his love of nature in recent years, revealing his passion for beekeeping on the couple’s Cotswolds estate near Great Tew in Oxfordshire.