The inaugural Henry Cole Lecture, held at the V&A; Museum in London on 30 October 2008. The purpose of the lecture is to celebrate the legacy of the Museum’s founding director, and explore its implications for museums, culture and society today. The lecture, entitled 'We Must Have Steam: Get Cole! Henry Cole, the Chamber of Horrors, and the Educational Role of the Museum' was delivered by Professor Sir Christopher Frayling. He presented new research on the “chamber of horrors” (a contemporary nickname for one of the V&A;'s earliest galleries, 'Decorations on False Principles', that opened in 1852) and the myths and realities of its reception, then opened up a wider debate on design education and museums from the nineteenth century to the present day. Transcript: Mark Jones: The annual Henry Cole lecture has been initiated to celebrate Henry Cole's legacy and to explore the contribution that culture can make to education and society today. It has also been launched to celebrate the opening of the Sackler Centre for arts education, including the Hochhauser Auditorium in which we sit tonight. There could be no one better than Professor Sir Christopher Frayling to give the inaugural Henry Cole Lecture. Christopher is a rare being: an intellectual who is a great communicator; a theorist who has a firm grip on the practical realities of life: a writer who truly and instinctively understands the words of making design and visual communication. As an enormously successful and respected Rector of the Royal College of Art, as Chairman of the Arts Council, and as a member and chair of boards too numerous to mention - but not forgetting the Royal Mint Advisory Committee which has recently been responsible for redesigning the coinage (personal interest) and as by far the longest-serving Trustee of the V&A;, he brings together culture, education and public service in a way which Henry Cole would have approved and admired. So it's more than fitting that he should be giving this first Henry Cole Lecture, 'We Must Have Steam: Get Cole! Henry Cole, the Chamber of Horrors, and the Educational Role of the Museum'. CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING: Thank you very much indeed Mark and thank you very much for inviting me to give this first Henry Cole Lecture. Just how much of an honour it is for me will I hope become clear as the lecture progresses. Mark, Chairpeople, ladies and gentlemen: Hidden away in the garden of the South Kensington Museum - now the Madejski Garden of the V&A; - there is a small and easily overlooked commemorative plaque that doesn't have a museum number. It reads: 'In Memory of Jim Died 1879 Aged 15 Years, Faithful Dog of Sir Henry Cole of this Museum'. Jim had in fact died on 30 January 1879. He was with Henry Cole in his heyday, as the king of South Kensington - its museums and colleges - and saw him through to retirement from the public service and beyond. And next to this inscription there's another one dedicated to Jim's successor, Tycho, and dated 1885. The dogs are actually buried in the garden. Now we know from Henry Cole's diary that between 1864 and 1879 Jim, who was a cairn terrier, was often to be seen in public at his master's side. In 1864 they were together inspecting the new memorial to the Great Exhibition of 1851 just behind the Albert Hall - a statue of Prince Albert by Joseph Durham on a lofty plinth covered in statistics about the income, expenditure and visitor numbers to the Great Exhibition: 6,039,195 to be exact. Cole had been a tireless champion of Prince Albert and according to the Princess Royal (later Empress of Prussia) there was a family saying in Buckingham Palace at the time, invented by Albert himself, that when things needed doing 'when we want steam we must get Cole'. We may therefore assume that when looking at the memorial, Cole was interested in the inscription, the statistics and the likeness of Prince Albert, while Jim was more interested in the possibilities of the plinth. In early 1866 - these are five studies of Jim, an etching by Henry Cole himself of 1864. In early 1866, first thing in the morning, soon after the workmen's bell had rung, Henry and Jim would set forth together from Cole's newly constructed official residence in the Museum (where he moved in July 1863) to tour the building sites of South Kensington - a name which was first invented by Cole when he re-named the museum The South Kensington Museum to describe the new developments happening around Brompton Church. According to 'The Builder' magazine, these two well-known figures would 'be seen clambering over bricks, mortar and girders up ladders and about scaffolding'. Several buildings in the South Kensington Renaissance Revival style were springing up all around them: The Natural History Museum, The College of Science, the extension to this Museum. And on the morning the Bethnal Green Museum opened - 24 June 1872 - Jim showed a healthy distaste for his master's well-known predilection for pomp and