Sir Christopher John Frayling (born 25 December 1946) is a British educationalist and writer, known for his study of popular culture.

Early life and education

Christopher Frayling was born in Hampton, a suburb of London, in affluent circumstances. His father, Major Arthur Frederick Frayling,

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(1910–1993), late of the

Royal Army Service Corps The Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was a corps of the British Army responsible for land, coastal and lake transport, air despatch, barracks administration, the Army Fire Service, staffing headquarters' units, supply of food, water, fuel and dom ...

, was chairman of the Hudson's Bay fur auction house in London and of the International Fur Trade Federation; his mother, Barbara Kathleen ("Betty"), daughter of record and audio equipment store owner Alfred Imhof, was a driver in international car rallies, and won the RAC Rally with her brother, Godfrey Imhof, in 1952. His brother,

Nicholas Nicholas is a male given name and a surname. The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglicanism, Anglican Churches celebrate Saint Nicholas every year on December 6, which is the name day for "Nicholas". In Greece, the n ...

, was Dean of Chichester Cathedral from 2002-2014. After attending Repton School, Frayling read history at

Churchill College, Cambridge Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It has a primary focus on science, engineering and technology, but still retains a strong interest in the arts and humanities. In 1958, a trust was establish ...

and gained a PhD in the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was appointed a Fellow of the college in 2009.

Career

Frayling taught history at the University of Bath and was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Arts) from that University in 2003. In 1979 Frayling was appointed Professor of Cultural History at London's post-graduate art and design school, the Royal College of Art. Frayling was Rector of the Royal College of Art from 1996 to 2009. In 2003 he was awarded the

Sir Misha Black Award The Sir Misha Black Awards commemorate the life of Misha Black, whose work played an important role in the development of design in Britain. They are given to individuals and institutions, to honor them in their role within design education. Th ...

and was added to the College of Medallists. He was the Chairman of

Arts Council England Arts Council England is an arm's length non-departmental public body of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is also a registered charity. It was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three s ...

from 2005 until January 2009. He also served as Chairman of the Design Council, Chairman of the

Royal Mint The Royal Mint is the United Kingdom's oldest company and the official maker of British coins. Operating under the legal name The Royal Mint Limited, it is a limited company that is wholly owned by His Majesty's Treasury and is under an exclus ...

Advisory Committee, and a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was a governor of the British Film Institute in the 1980s. In April 2014 he was appointed Chancellor of the Arts University Bournemouth. He has had a wide output as a writer and critic on subjects ranging from vampires to westerns. He has written and presented television series such as ''The Art of Persuasion'' on advertising and ''Strange Landscape'' on the Middle Ages. He has conducted a series of radio and television interviews with figures from the world of film, including Woody Allen,

Deborah Kerr Deborah Jane Trimmer CBE (30 September 192116 October 2007), known professionally as Deborah Kerr (), was a British actress. She was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress. During her international film career, Kerr won a G ...

, Ken Adam,

Francis Ford Coppola Francis Ford Coppola (; ; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Coppola is the recipient of five A ...

and

Clint Eastwood Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series '' Rawhide'', he rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "''Doll ...

. He has written and presented several television series, including ''The Face of Tutankhamun'' and ''Nightmare: Birth of Horror''. He studied

Spaghetti Western The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...

s and specifically director

Sergio Leone Sergio Leone (; 3 January 1929 – 30 April 1989) was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter credited as the pioneer of the Spaghetti Western genre and widely regarded as one of the most influential directors in the history of cin ...

. He has written a very popular biography of Leone, ''Something To Do With Death'' (2000); helped run the Los Angeles-based Gene Autry Museum's exhibit on Leone in 2005; and appeared in numerous documentaries about Leone and his films, particularly the DVD documentaries of '' Once Upon a Time in the West'' (1968). He also provided audio commentaries for the special edition DVD releases of '' A Fistful of Dollars'', ''

For a Few Dollars More ''For a Few Dollars More'' ( it, Per qualche dollaro in più) is a 1965 Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone. It stars Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef as bounty hunters and Gian Maria Volonté as the primary villain. German actor K ...

'', '' Once Upon a Time in the West'' and '' The Colossus of Rhodes''. In January 2018, he gave a lecture at the British Library in the Hogwarts Curriculum Lecture series on "Defence against the Dark Arts". This specialised in the treatment of vampires.

Knighthood

In 2001, he was awarded a knighthood for "Services to Art and Design Education" and chose as his motto "PERGE SCELUS MIHI DIEM PERFICIAS", which can be translated as "Proceed, varlet, and let the day be rendered perfect for my benefit".The College of Arms
/ref> That is, "Go ahead, punk, make my day". The bendlets charged with billets allude to 'perfs' or 'sprocket holes' in 35mm film, and thus stand for film studies, an area of Sir Christopher's academic work. The bendlets are placed in the 'sinister' (a traditional mark of bastardy) because Frayling's writings about westerns and cowboy films were initially regarded by other academics as illegitimate - the reference to bastardy is thus an ironic satire of this perspective. This aspect of the design was suggested by a former student of Professor Frayling's.

Arms

Select bibliography

Literature

* ''Napoleon Wrote Fiction'' (1972) * ''The Vampyre'' (1978); Gollanz ** Expanded as ''Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula'' (1991); Faber & Faber ** Expanded as ''Vampyres: Genesis and Resurrection from Count Dracula to Vampirella'' (2016);

Thames & Hudson Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...

* ''Nightmare: Birth of Horror'' (1996) * ''On Craftsmanship: towards a new Bauhaus'' (2011) * ''The Yellow Peril – Dr Fu Manchu and the Rise of Chinophobia'' (2014) * ''Inside the Bloody Chamber: on Angela Carter, the Gothic and other weird tales'' (2015)

History

* ''The Face of Tutankhamun'' (1992) * ''Strange Landscape: Journey Through the Middle Ages'' (1995)

Film

* ''Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone'' (1981) * ''American Westerners'' (1984) * ''Clint Eastwood'' (1992) * ''Things to Come'' (1995) * ''Sergio Leone: Something To Do With Death'' (2000) * ''Mad, Bad and Dangerous?: The Scientist and the Cinema'' (2005) * ''Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in Italy'' (2005) * ''Ken Adam: The Art of Production Design'' (2005) * ''Once Upon a Time in The West Shooting a Masterpiece'' (2019)

Education

* ''The Royal College of Art: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Art and Design'' (1987) * ''Design of the Times: One Hundred Years of the Royal College of Art'' (1996) * ''The Art Pack'' (1998)

List of audio commentaries

*'' Beauty and the Beast'' (1946) *'' The Big Country'' (1958) – only on the US Kino Lorber and German Koch Media Blu-rays. *'' The Colossus of Rhodes'' (1961) *'' Duck, You Sucker!'' (1971) *'' A Fistful of Dollars'' (1964) *''

'' (1965) *'' Frankenstein'' (1931) *'' Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man'' (1943) *'' The Ghost of Frankenstein'' (1942) *'' The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'' (1966) *'' The Innocents'' (1961) – only on the UK BFI and US

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

DVD and Blu-ray, along with a featurette he presents. *'' The Magnificent Seven'' (1960) – only on the US MGM Collector's Edition DVD, along with a featurette he presents. *'' Once Upon a Time in the West'' (1968), with actress Claudia Cardinale; directors Bernardo Bertolucci, John Carpenter, Alex Cox and

John Milius John Frederick Milius (; born April 11, 1944) is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. He was a writer for the first two ''Dirty Harry'' films, received an Academy Award nomination as screenwriter of ''Apocalypse Now'' (1979), a ...

; and fellow film historian Dr. Sheldon Hall.

Notes

External links

Frayling on BBC ''Desert Island Discs''

Interview (02/2008)

Interview (05/2004)

Interview (02/2002)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Frayling, Christopher 1946 births Living people British writers British television presenters British educational theorists Knights Bachelor Academics of the University of Bath Rectors of the Royal College of Art Academics of the Royal College of Art Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge Place of birth missing (living people) People associated with Arts University Bournemouth