When Frayne was eighteen months old the family moved to Ewell, on the southwest fringe of London. Frayn says: "Everyone puts down the suburbs but they're very pleasant places to live. It's quite amazing how little they've changed in 40 years. They should be taken more seriously." He attended what he describes as "a dreadful private day school at Sutton, where the headmaster used to cane about 20 boys every morning after prayers." He went on to Kingston Grammar School, which he found a rather decent place.
He left with a state scholarship to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but first had to do his two years of national service, from 1952 to 1954. Starting out in the Royal Artillery, he was recruited into the Intelligence Corps and taught Russian fourteen hours a day for eighteen months. In his first year at Cambridge he read Russian and French but found that though "he got on well with the language, when it came to the literature he couldn't see for the life of him what to write down." For his remaining two years he changed to moral sciences (philosophy). He wrote prolifically at Cambridge, producing columns for Varsity and stories forGranta, ; he also wrote most of Zounds!, the 1957 Footlights show, a revue staged annually in May Week.
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