Crime novelist Ian Rankin and the Olympic gold medal winning curling team are among the Scots named in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Rankin, the author of the Inspector Rebus novels, has been awarded an OBE while the triumphant curlers were all made MBEs.

Celtic Football Club's veteran defender Tommy Boyd was made an MBE, while farmer's union leader Jim Walker became a CBE.

Chief inspector of education Douglas Osler was awarded the Order of the Bath and the chairman of brewers Scottish and Newcastle, Brian Stewart, was given a knighthood in the list.

Honours were also bestowed on people from a wide spectrum of public life, including academics, court officials, teachers and the emergency services.

Ian Rankin: "Dark fiction"

Novels featuring the hard-nosed Edinburgh detective, Inspector John Rebus, have catapulted Rankin to the highest ranks of modern British crime writing.

He first published a Rebus novel in 1987, but three years later he went to live in the French countryside.

"This pastoral idyll failed to stop me writing dark, dark fiction," he said.

Since his return to the UK in the mid-nineties, Rankin has become one of Britain's most bankable authors.

Bagpipe music

Scotland's gold-medal winning curling team at this year's Salt Lake City Winter Olympics - skip Rhona Martin, Debbie Knox, Fiona MacDonald, Margaret Morton and Janice Rankin - were all awarded the MBE.

World-class jazz guitarist Martin Taylor, 46, who instigated the Kirkmichael International Guitar Festival near his Ayrshire home, received the MBE.

The same honour was given to Robert Shepherd, of Cardenden, in Fife, for services to bagpipe music and teaching.

Scotland's Olympic Curling champions were made MBEs

Top Scottish Executive health official Godfrey Robson joined the Order of the Bath.

Leading Edinburgh architect John Spencely and David Will, the vice-president of international football's governing body Fifa, were awarded the CBE.

The emergency services also figured prominently, with members of the police, ambulance and lifeboat services honoured.

Highland special constable Alexander Bennett received the MBE for services to the police.

Weather patterns

Glasgow ambulance technician Robert Burns and Norman MacLeod of Oban lifeboat also received the honour.

Less high-profile figures were rewarded in the honours list.

Meteorologist David Wheeler, 59, who has been studying weather patterns on Fair Isle for almost 30 years, was made an MBE.

And Alfred Bruce, who drives a mobile draper's van in Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, was given the MBE for services to the community.