Christopher Frayling
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sir Christopher John Frayling (born 25 December 1946) is a British educationalist and writer, known for his study of popular culture.
He read history at Churchill College, Cambridge and gained a PhD in the study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
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. Since 1996 he has been Rector in charge of the College.
He is the Chairman of Arts Council England, 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.
Christopher Frayling was awarded a knighthood in 2001 for "Services to Art and Design Education" and chose "PERGE SCELUS MIHI DIEM PERFICIAS" as his motto, which translates as "Proceed, varlet, and let the day be rendered perfect for my benefit". In more modern English, the phrase would say: "Go ahead, punk, make my day".
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 Audrey Hepburn, 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 westerns 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).
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Select bibliography
Literature
- Napoleon Wrote Fiction (1972)
- Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (1978, revised 1992)
- 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)
