CYRIL FRANKEL's has been a life, or perhaps a series of lives, dedicated to art and artists. Although he is best known by the television viewers of the world as director and creative force behind classic series, such as Gideon's Way, Department S, The Champions, Jason King, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), The Protectors and The Adventurer, this was but one aspect of a career that has spanned ballet, theatre, music - and an entirely separate, and equally successful, career as an expert in fine art and ceramics for major London auction houses, Christie's and Bonham's. In another of his lives, he was the director of a dozen or so feature films - among them the Ealing classic School for Scoundrels and, often cited as Hammer's best non-gothic film, Never Take Sweets From A Stranger. Universally appreciated and praised by his actors, he launched the film careers of both Richard Harris and Sean Connery and became the only trusted director of Hollywood legends Joan Fontaine and Ava Gardner. In latter years Cyril returned to making documentaries - this time on subjects close to his heart and passions: artists such as the world-renowned ceramicist Dame Lucie Rie, who had steadfastly refused to be filmed by anyone else - for the BBC's acclaimed Monitor series. His lifetime association with film had begun in documentaries, during the golden age of the Crown Film Unit - an association which led to what is perhaps the ne plus ultra of his many achievements: the first ever film with an all-black cast and a unique document of a lost culture, suppressed and presumed lost at the time, but now gloriously rediscovered, Man of Africa. Cyril's work and life are shot through with an underlying humour, a sense of humanity and a deep and unconventional spirituality - the honest and direct communication expressed in the title he chose for this book. It was this intangible quality that attracted me to his work and to my first attempts to get his story told. It is an honour for Bank House Books finally to be able to bring him 'eye to eye' with the world at large. Dave Randle