Christopher Frayling
Encyclopedia
Sir Christopher John Frayling (born 25 December 1946) is a British educationalist and writer, known for his study of popular culture.
and gained a PhD in the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
. He was appointed a Fellow of the college in 2009.
He taught history at the University of Bath
and in 1979 was appointed Professor of Cultural History at London's post-graduate art and design school, the Royal College of Art
. Frayling was Rector in charge of the Royal College of Art from 1996 to 2009.
He was the Chairman of Arts Council England
from 2005 until January 2009. Frayling has also been Chairman of the Design Council
, Chairman of the Royal Mint
Advisory Committee, and a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum
. He was a governor of the British Film Institute
in the 1980s.
In 2001, Christopher Frayling 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". He wished to suggest the well-known phrase attributed to Police Inspector Harry Callahan in the movie Sudden Impact
: "Go ahead, punk, make my day". (The role of Callahan was played by Clint Eastwood
.)
Frayling 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
, Ken Adam
, Francis Ford Coppola
and Clint Eastwood
. He has also written and presented several television series, including The Face of Tutankhamun and Nightmare: Birth of Horror.
He is especially known for his study of spaghetti western
s and specifically director Sergio Leone
. 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 the summer of 2005; and has 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
, Once Upon a Time in the West
and The Colossus of Rhodes
, as well as a short interview for a special feature called the Frayling Reading on the DVD release of the Dr. Who serial State of Decay
. His brother, Nicholas Frayling
is the Dean of Chichester
.
Biography
Frayling read history at Churchill College, CambridgeChurchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.In 1958, a Trust was established with Sir Winston Churchill as its Chairman of Trustees, to build and endow a college for 60 fellows and 540 Students as a national and Commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill; its...
and gained a PhD in the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
. He was appointed a Fellow of the college in 2009.
He taught history at the University of Bath
University of Bath
The University of Bath is a campus university located in Bath, United Kingdom. It received its Royal Charter in 1966....
and in 1979 was appointed Professor of Cultural History at London's post-graduate art and design school, the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
. Frayling was Rector in charge of the Royal College of Art from 1996 to 2009.
He was the Chairman of Arts Council England
Arts Council England
Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...
from 2005 until January 2009. Frayling has also been Chairman of the Design Council
Design Council
The Design Council is a United Kingdom non-departmental public body incorporated by Royal Charter and registered as a charity.Registered charity number 272099.- In the beginning :The Design Council started in 1944 as the Council of Industrial Design...
, Chairman of the Royal Mint
Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is the body permitted to manufacture, or mint, coins in the United Kingdom. The Mint originated over 1,100 years ago, but since 2009 it operates as Royal Mint Ltd, a company which has an exclusive contract with HM Treasury to supply all coinage for the UK...
Advisory Committee, and a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
. He was a governor of the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
in the 1980s.
In 2001, Christopher Frayling was awarded a knighthood
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
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". He wished to suggest the well-known phrase attributed to Police Inspector Harry Callahan in the movie Sudden Impact
Sudden Impact
Sudden Impact is a 1983 American crime thriller and the fourth film in the Dirty Harry series, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood...
: "Go ahead, punk, make my day". (The role of Callahan was played by Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
.)
Frayling 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
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
and Strange Landscape on the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
.
He has conducted a series of radio and television interviews with figures from the world of film, including Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr
Deborah Kerr, CBE was a Scottish film and television actress from Glasgow. She won the Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago performance as Laura Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy, a role which she originated on Broadway, a Golden Globe Award for the motion picture The King and I, and was a three-time...
, Ken Adam
Ken Adam
Sir Kenneth Adam, OBE, born Klaus Hugo Adam , is a motion picture production designer most famous for his set designs for the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s.-Childhood in Germany:...
, Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
and Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
. He has also written and presented several television series, including The Face of Tutankhamun and Nightmare: Birth of Horror.
He is especially known for his study of spaghetti western
Spaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...
s and specifically director Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...
. 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 the summer of 2005; and has appeared in numerous documentaries about Leone and his films, particularly the DVD documentaries of Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone for Paramount Pictures. It stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Jason Robards as a bandit, and Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader with a...
(1968). He also provided audio commentaries for the special edition DVD releases of A Fistful of Dollars
A Fistful of Dollars
A Fistful of Dollars is a 1964 Italian Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, José Calvo, Antonio Prieto, and Joseph Egger. Released in Italy in 1964 then in the United States in...
, For a Few Dollars More
For a Few Dollars More
For a Few Dollars More is a 1965 Italian spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonté. German actor Klaus Kinski also plays a supporting role as a secondary villain...
, Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone for Paramount Pictures. It stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Jason Robards as a bandit, and Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader with a...
and The Colossus of Rhodes
Il Colosso di Rodi
Il Colosso di Rodi is a 1961 sword and sandal film directed by Sergio Leone. It was Leone's first work as a credited director, in a genre where he already had worked before . It is by far the least known of his films...
, as well as a short interview for a special feature called the Frayling Reading on the DVD release of the Dr. Who serial State of Decay
State of Decay
State of Decay is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 22 November to 13 December 1980. The serial was the second of three loosely connected serials known as the E-Space trilogy...
. His brother, Nicholas Frayling
Nicholas Frayling
The Very Reverend Nicholas Frayling is the Dean of Chichester Cathedral. Educated at the University of Exeter and Cuddesdon College, Frayling has lectured on inter-faith and political reconciliation. Formerly Canon Precentor of Liverpool Cathedral, he was appointed Dean of Chichester in...
is the Dean of Chichester
Chichester Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, otherwise called Chichester Cathedral, is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Chichester. It is located in Chichester, in Sussex, England...
.
Literature
- Napoleon Wrote Fiction (1972)
- Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (1978, revised 1992)
- Nightmare: Birth of Horror (1996)
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)
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 BeastBeauty and the Beast (1946 film)Beauty and the Beast is a 1946 French romantic fantasy film adaptation of the traditional fairy tale of the same name, written by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont and published in 1757 as part of a fairy tale anthology . Directed by French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, the film stars Josette...
- The Colossus of RhodesIl Colosso di RodiIl Colosso di Rodi is a 1961 sword and sandal film directed by Sergio Leone. It was Leone's first work as a credited director, in a genre where he already had worked before . It is by far the least known of his films...
- Duck, You Sucker!
- A Fistful of DollarsA Fistful of DollarsA Fistful of Dollars is a 1964 Italian Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, José Calvo, Antonio Prieto, and Joseph Egger. Released in Italy in 1964 then in the United States in...
- For a Few Dollars MoreFor a Few Dollars MoreFor a Few Dollars More is a 1965 Italian spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonté. German actor Klaus Kinski also plays a supporting role as a secondary villain...
- FrankensteinFrankenstein (1931 film)Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
- The Good, the Bad and the UglyThe Good, the Bad and the UglyThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone...
- The Innocents
- The Magnificent SevenThe Magnificent SevenThe Magnificent Seven is an American Western film directed by John Sturges, and released in 1960. It is a fictional tale of a group of seven American gunmen who are hired to protect a small agricultural village in Mexico from a group of marauding Mexican bandits...
- Once Upon a Time in the WestOnce Upon a Time in the WestOnce Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone for Paramount Pictures. It stars Henry Fonda cast against type as the villain, Charles Bronson as his nemesis, Jason Robards as a bandit, and Claudia Cardinale as a newly widowed homesteader with a...
, with directors John CarpenterJohn CarpenterJohn Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
, John MiliusJohn MiliusJohn Frederick Milius is an American screenwriter, director, and producer of motion pictures.-Early life:Milius was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Elizabeth and William Styx Milius, who was a shoe manufacturer. Milius attempted to join the Marine Corps in the late 1960s, but was rejected...
, and Alex CoxAlex CoxAlexander Cox is a British film director, screenwriter, nonfiction author and sometime actor, notable for his idiosyncratic style and approach to scripts...
, film historian Dr. Sheldon Hall, and other participants