The Victoria Cross: How Britain's Highest Award for Gallantry Was Created

The Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry. Imperial War Museum collection (HU69722), public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Few military honours carry the weight of the Victoria Cross. It is the highest award in the British honours system, reserved for "most conspicuous bravery, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy." Since Queen Victoria created it during the Crimean War it has been awarded just 1,358 times. This is how it came to exist, what it is made of, and the recipients who stand apart in such rare company.

Key facts

• The Victoria Cross was instituted by Royal Warrant on 29 January 1856 and backdated to 1854 to cover the Crimean War.
• The first awards were presented by Queen Victoria at Hyde Park on 26 June 1857, 62 of the 111 Crimean recipients invested on the day.
• It has been awarded 1,358 times to 1,355 individuals, and can be won by a person of any rank in any service.
• Every VC has been made by the London jewellers Hancocks & Co, from a guarded stock of gun metal at MoD Donnington.
• Only 15 awards have been made since the Second World War; only three people have ever won it twice.

Why Britain needed a new medal

In 1854, after 39 years of peace, Britain went to war with Russia in the Crimea, one of the first conflicts with modern reporting. The Times correspondent William Howard Russell described acts of bravery by ordinary servicemen that went unrewarded. There was no standard system for recognising gallantry: officers might receive a junior grade of the Order of the Bath or a brevet promotion, while a private soldier who distinguished himself could expect little more than a mention in dispatches. France awarded the Legion of Honour regardless of rank, and public and court opinion moved towards a British equivalent. Queen Victoria vetoed the proposed name, The Military Order of Victoria, and chose the Victoria Cross.

The Queen's warrant of 1856

Queen Victoria issued the warrant under the royal sign-manual on 29 January 1856. It was gazetted on 5 February and backdated to 1854 so the men who had fought in the Crimea could be included. The rank-blind nature of the award was the point: a trooper and a colonel faced the same test, and it remains possible for a person of any rank in the Naval, Military and Air Forces, the Merchant Navy, or a civilian serving under military command to receive it. No civilian has received it since James Adams in 1879.

The first ceremony was held on 26 June 1857, when the Queen invested 62 of the 111 Crimean recipients at a parade in Hyde Park, London. She had indicated she wanted to present the medals in person, and she presented 185 of the 472 gazetted during her reign. Since then nearly 900 awards have been personally presented by the reigning monarch.

What the medal looks like

The decoration is a bronze cross pattée, 41 millimetres high, bearing the Crown of Saint Edward surmounted by a lion, with the inscription "For Valour". The wording had originally been "For the Brave", changed on the Queen's recommendation because it implied that only those who won it were brave. Recipient details are engraved on the reverse of the suspension bar, with the date of the act on the reverse of the medal. The ribbon is crimson: originally red for the army and dark blue for the navy, but the blue was abolished after the Royal Air Force was formed in 1918.

Cast from captured cannon, or not

The traditional story is that every VC is cast from the cascabels of two cannon captured from the Russians at the siege of Sevastopol. It is one of the most famous claims in British military history, and it is very likely wrong. Research by the historian John Glanfield, using X-ray studies of older medals, established that the metal used for almost all VCs since December 1914 comes from antique Chinese cannon, probably taken as trophies during the First Opium War and held in the Woolwich repository.

What is certain is the chain of custody. A single firm, Hancocks & Co of London, has produced every VC since the medal's inception. The last cascabel, about 10 kilograms of metal, is stored in a vault at MoD Donnington maintained by 15 Regiment Royal Logistic Corps, removable only under armed guard. It is estimated that some 80 to 85 more medals could be cast from what remains.

Who can receive it, and how

A recommendation is normally issued by an officer at regimental level and supported by three witnesses. It passes up the hierarchy to the Secretary of State for Defence, and the award is laid before the monarch for approval and promulgated in The London Gazette. The original warrant made no provision for posthumous awards, but six were granted during the Second Boer War on 8 August 1902, and the warrant was amended to allow them explicitly in 1920, by which time a quarter of First World War awards had been posthumous. The 1920 warrant also made provision for women in the armed forces to receive the VC, though no woman ever has.

One provision survives that has not been used since 1918: when a whole body of men is deemed equally deserving, the VC can be awarded by ballot. The officers select one officer, the NCOs one individual and the rank and file two.

The record holders

The numbers tell their own story. The most VCs for a single day is 24, for deeds on 16 November 1857: 23 at Lucknow and one at Narnoul. The most by a single unit in one action is seven, to the 2nd/24th Foot for Rorke's Drift in January 1879. The most in one conflict is 628, during the First World War. Only three people have won it twice: Noel Chavasse and Arthur Martin-Leake, both Royal Army Medical Corps doctors recognised for rescuing wounded men under fire, and New Zealand infantryman Charles Upham, recognised for combat actions. Upham remains the only combat soldier with the VC and Bar.

The modern Victoria Cross

Since the end of the Second World War the original VC has been awarded 15 times: four in the Korean War, one in the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation in 1965, four to Australians in the Vietnam War, two during the Falklands War in 1982, one in the Iraq War, and three in Afghanistan for actions in 2006, 2012 and 2013.

Private Johnson Beharry of the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment won it in Iraq, for two extraordinary acts in Al-Amarah in 2004: driving his burning armoured vehicle out of ambushes on 1 May and again on 11 June, saving his crew both times. Gazetted in March 2005, his was the first VC awarded since the Falklands War.

Two of the Afghanistan awards were posthumous: Corporal Bryan Budd of the Parachute Regiment for actions at Sangin in 2006, and Lance Corporal James Ashworth of the Grenadier Guards for an action in 2012. The third went to Lance Corporal Joshua Leakey of the Parachute Regiment, for a joint British-American raid in Helmand Province on 22 August 2013, when he repeatedly exposed himself to intense enemy fire to resupply ammunition and extract casualties. Awarded the cross in 2015, he was the only living British soldier to receive the VC for the Afghanistan campaign, and the last person to receive it from Queen Elizabeth II.

Where the medals are today

The VC is highly prized. Captain Alfred Shout's medal fetched a world record hammer price of one million Australian dollars, around 410,000 pounds at the time, in 2006, and the VC and Bar of Noel Chavasse was reportedly bought by Lord Ashcroft for almost 1.5 million pounds in 2009.

Lord Ashcroft's collection, built up since 1986, holds 162 medals, more than a tenth of all VCs ever awarded. From 2010 it was on display at the Lord Ashcroft Gallery at the Imperial War Museum in London, with 210 VCs in total alongside the museum's own holdings, until the gallery closed in 2025. The National Army Museum in Chelsea holds 39 medals, and also the prototype Victoria Cross submitted to Queen Victoria for approval in February 1856.

Historians have suggested that the changing nature of warfare, with fewer large conventional battles and greater use of long-range and uncrewed systems, will mean fewer VCs awarded. The medal remains an active honour, and the metal reserve at Donnington is intact. The next award will carry the same bronze, the same crimson ribbon, and the same demand: conspicuous bravery in the presence of the enemy, regardless of rank.

Conclusion

The Victoria Cross was born from a Victorian idea: that gallantry should be recognised wherever it appears, from the humblest private to the most senior officer. Nearly 170 years later, with 1,358 awards across every war since the Crimea, it remains the rarest and most respected of British military honours. The gun-metal myth has been retired by the historians. The standard the medal sets has not changed.

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Sources

• Wikipedia, "Victoria Cross" (cross-checked against its cited references, including the National Army Museum, Imperial War Museum and MOD sources)
• The London Gazette citations for the modern VC awards (via the List of Victoria Cross recipients by campaign)
• John Glanfield, research on the gun-metal origins as summarised in The Daily Telegraph, 28 December 2005
• Wikimedia Commons, Imperial War Museum collection file IWM HU69722 (featured image, public domain)