SELS 2010 - Sir Christopher Frayling

Engineers and designers always seem to be concerned about their image among the non-specialist public, and the esteem in which they are held. This illustrated lecture - still and moving images - examines one kind of evidence of "public image" - the stereotypes of the engineer and the engineering designer in popular film. Starting with the "missionary" image in the I930s, the "boffin" in the Second World War, the "teacher of the world" in the 1950s, the lecture moves on to discuss "Q" in the James Bond franchise ... and concludes with an eccentric potting-shed engineer and his plasticine dog. An epilogue looks at what is to be done and asks whether this kind of stereotyping really matters.

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, 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.

Tickets are available from the University's Online Store.

Drinks reception follows.

Overflow theatres may be in use.