Professor Donald Cornwallis Treadway Trefusis (1921–2008) is an eccentric fictional character created by

Stephen Fry Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring ...

. He initially appeared as an occasional contributor of "wireless essays" to

Ned Sherrin Edward George Sherrin (18 February 1931 – 1 October 2007) was an English broadcaster, author and stage director. He qualified as a barrister and then worked in independent television before joining the BBC. He appeared in a variety of r ...

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

programme '' Loose Ends'' in 1986. Trefusis was portrayed as a senior

tutor TUTOR, also known as PLATO Author Language, is a programming language developed for use on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign beginning in roughly 1965. TUTOR was initially designed by Paul Tenczar for use in ...

at the fictional St Matthew's College and professor of

philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

. He is an important character in the novel '' The Liar''. Transcripts of the ''Loose Ends'' broadcasts were published as essays in '' Paperweight''. In addition to a propensity for taking very liberal positions on a range of social issues, as when he states his credentials as "a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance," the greetings and salutations to his broadcasts almost always consist of a non-sequitur (e.g. "Hugely so to you all ..And if you have been, then it was"). In 2009 Trefusis returned from the grave in a new audio series ''The Dongle of Donald Trefusis''. He also manifested on Twitter.

Notes

External links

''The Dongle of Donald Trefusis'' homepage
Trefusis, Donald Fictional professors Fictional linguists Characters in British novels of the 20th century Fictional English people Literary characters introduced in 1986 {{lit-char-stub