In the New Year's Honours list for 2000, it was declared that, in recognition of his distinguished services to Arts Education, Professor Christopher John Frayling - historian, critic, broadcaster, Rector of the Royal College of Art and one of the very Greatest and Goodest (yes, goodest: a perfectly cromulent superlative) of our nation's Great and Good - had been granted the title of Knight. Sir Christopher accepted Her Majesty's gracious favour, and duly entered into negotiations with the College of Heralds as to the details of the coat of arms that was now his privilege. It has taken quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, but the Frayling acchievement is now complete, and a handsome thing it is, too: a set of wittily arcane emblems surmounting a Latin motto which reads "Perge, Scelus, Mihi Diem Perficias". The gentleman at the College translated this, quite accurately, as "Proceed, varlet, and let the day be rendered perfect for my benefit." But it sounds better in the demotic: Go ahead, punk, make my day.

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"I didn't belong to any party, but I did take part in some demonstrations. I was actually in Paris in May 1968 [during the Paris Uprising], researching Rousseau, who became the subject of my doctorate. It's a famous joke among my friends that I was sitting in the Bibliotheque Nationale, getting very irritated with all the rowdiness and saying 'shhh!' to all the noisy people there, 'I'm trying to study revolution here, can't you be quiet?'"