Francis Klingender

At the start of the first World War, his father, Louis Henry Weston Klingender (1861–1950), was interned near Berlin on suspicion of spying for the British.

The family moved back to England in the 1920s and Klingender supported them while attending night classes at the London School of Economics.

He subsequently embarked on an academic career in sociology, becoming a lecturer in that subject at the University of Hull, which position he retained until his death.

Klingender inherited an interest in this subject from his father who had been a painter of animals, and he added to that his own sociological, Marxist and Freudian interpretations.

His thesis was that as well as being the companions and servants of man, the depiction of animals in art was symbolic of the hidden or secret urges of society.