LEADING figures from the world of journalism, politics, business and performing arts are to receive honorary degrees from the University of York this week.

The award-winning BBC journalist, Orla Guerin, currently based in Cairo, will pick up a degree at the end of the week, alongside Professor Dr Horst Koehler, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany; pianist, poet and author, Alfred Brendel and Vasily Petrenko chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Gongs will also be awarded to Sacha Romanovitch the first woman to lead a major City accountancy firm; Rob Wilmot, one of the three founding executives of Freeserve, the UK’s largest internet service provider; the engineer, educator and government advisor Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyy and Dame Vivian Hunt, the managing partner for McKinsey & Company’s United Kingdom and Ireland offices who has been identified as one of the 30 most influential people in the City of London by the Financial Times.

Ms Guerin began her career in newspapers and joined RTÉ News in 1987.

In 1990 she became the broadcaster’s youngest foreign correspondent, covering Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union.

She joined the BBC in 1995 and went on to become Southern Europe Correspondent, returning to the Balkans to report on the crisis in Kosovo.

A short period in Moscow followed before a five-year stint as the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent, based in Jerusalem. In 2006 she became Africa Correspondent. She moved on to Pakistan in 2009, and returned to the Middle East in 2013.

Mr Wilmot’s Freeserve business was launched by the retailer Dixon in 1998, and became the UK’s largest internet service provider in just three months, with Rob becoming one of the youngest-ever executive officers of a FTSE 100 company.