Top doodle hits global audience

Daniel Thorne will meet the Queen at Google's London headquarters

Artwork by a Surrey schoolboy hit an international audience when it won an national competition to appear on a search engine home page.

Daniel Thorne's picture was the overall winner of this year's Doogle 4 Google competition for young people.

The 15-year-old, who attends Howard of Effingham school in Leatherhead, won a trip to California with his family.

More than 70,000 youngsters from 3,000 schools had entered their designs based on the My Community theme.

A public online vote selected four age group winners, and Google artist Dennis Hwang picked Daniel's work as the overall doodle winner.

Daniel, who was also highly commended in the Tate's Alternative Turner Prize this year, said: "Out of so many entries it was a big shock when I found out that I had won."

'Extraordinary achievement'

Daniel will also meet the Queen at the company's London headquarters on 16 October and won an interactive whiteboard for his school.

He said his design represented peace and harmony among people of different races and communities.

Another pupil at the school, 12-year-old Kate McCann, won the regional south-east category for her age group.

Peter Martin, Surrey county council's executive member for schools, said it was an "extraordinary and very exciting achievement".

"And for two pupils from the same school both to be winners is all the more impressive," he added. "Daniel, Kate and the school should all be very proud."

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