appreciation of music despite describing herself as "pretty well tone-deaf". Her non-political accomplishments include being a popular novelist. Widdecombe also currently writes a weekly column for the Daily Express. In January 2011 Widdecombe was President of the North of England Education Conference in Blackpool, and gave a speech there supporting selective education and opposing the ban on new grammar schools being built. She has also become a patron of The Grace Charity for M.E. Widdecombe revealed, in an April 2012 interview with Matt Chorley of The Independent, that she was writing her own autobiography, which she described as "rude about all and sundry, but an amount of truth is always necessary". Widdecombe is a Patron of the charity Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land (SHADH) and in 2014 visited the SHADH Donkey Sanctuary in the West Bank. Religious views Widdecombe became an Anglican in her 30s, after a period of being an agnostic following her departure from religious schooling. Widdecombe is now a practising Roman Catholic; she converted in 1993 after leaving the Church of England. Her reasons for leaving the latter were many, as she explained to reporters from the New Statesman: I left the Church of England because there was a huge bundle of straw. The ordination of women was the last straw, but it was only one of many. For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England's compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn't care if something is unpopular. In October 2006, she pledged to boycott British Airways for suspending a worker who refused to hide her cross. The matter was resolved when the company reversed the suspension. In 2010, Widdecombe turned down the offer to be Britain's next ambassador to the Holy See, being prevented from accepting by suffering a detached retina. She was made a Dame of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Benedict XVI for services to politics and public life on 31 January 2013. Honours Widdecombe was appointed an Honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University at a ceremony held at Canterbury Cathedral on 30 January 2009. She was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of the University (D.Univ) by the University of Birmingham on 5 July 2012. : Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great (DSG) (2013) Selected publications Fiction 2000: The Clematis Tree. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2002: An Act of