Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell JP (23 May 1887 – 14 March 1941) was a British historian and academic who served as dean and later principal of Hertford College, Oxford.

His academic career was interrupted by service in the First World War during which he suffered severe wounds; he returned to Oxford in 1919 and became dean of Hertford, and then principal of the college in 1930.

In private life Cruttwell served as a Justice of the Peace in Hampshire, where he had a country home, and stood unsuccessfully for the university's parliamentary seat in the 1935 general election, representing the Conservative Party.

[2] On the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Cruttwell was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 1/4th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, a Territorial Force unit in which his brother was also serving.

[5] Apart from its physical effects, Cruttwell's wartime experience seemingly inflicted permanent psychological damage on his personality, replacing the general good manners of his youth with a short-tempered, impatient and bullying character.

[8] In the same year he published a biography of the Duke of Wellington and in 1937 produced his final major academic work, A History of Peaceful Change in the Modern World.

[14] He involved himself in a range of university activities to the detriment of his academic work, until Cruttwell brusquely advised him in his third term that he should take his studies more seriously—a warning which Waugh interpreted as an insult.

The mockery in this article was disguised as a paean of praise, according to Waugh's biographer Martin Stannard, arranged around an unflattering photograph of Cruttwell displaying "bad teeth within an unfortunate smile".

[18] Once Waugh had established himself as a writer, he resumed the vendetta against his former tutor by introducing a succession of disreputable or absurd characters named Cruttwell into his novels and stories.

[21] A survey was conducted in 1935 in which novelists were asked to nominate their best work, and Waugh responded that he had yet to write his masterpiece: "It is the memorial biography of C. R. M. F. Cruttwell, some time Dean of Hertford College, Oxford, and my old history tutor.

[24] Beyond his academic duties, he enjoyed entertaining at his country house near the village of Highclere in Hampshire where he was active in the local community and served as a Justice of the Peace.

In 1939, his poor physical condition caused him to retire early from Hertford,[2] followed by a period of mental illness possibly exacerbated by the continuing mockery from Waugh.

[2] The work was widely praised in the press at the time of publication;[4] The Naval Review thought that its description of the Battle of Jutland was "admirable": "for those who wish to gain a clear but not too detailed idea of the general course of the war, and of the relations of the different parts of it to one another, the book should be invaluable".

[4] More recently, writer and broadcaster Humphrey Carpenter has criticised the book as lacking in humanity, displaying "almost no awareness of the appalling degree of suffering it chronicles".

Waugh's biographer Selina Hastings describes him as "unprepossessing" in appearance, "good-hearted but difficult", inclined to misogyny, brusque and sometimes offensive towards his male colleagues.

[6] Waugh's description is of someone "tall, almost loutish, with the face of a petulant baby", of indistinct speech, who "smoked a pipe which was attached to his blubber-lips by a thread of slime".

[30] Ellis acknowledges a "forceful, forthright and eccentric character" but stresses Cruttwell's generous hospitality to close friends and his concern for his undergraduates' welfare.