Mike Raven
British artist
Austin Churton Fairman (15 November 1924 – 4 April 1997), who used the name Churton Fairman but was more widely known under the pseudonym Mike Raven in the 1960s and early 1970s, was a British radio disc jockey, actor, sculptor, sheep farmer, writer, TV presenter and producer, ballet dancer, flamenco guitarist and photographer.
Early life and career
Churton Fairman was born in London, the son of actors Austin Fairman (1892–1964) and Hilda Moore (c.1886–1929). His mother died in the United States when he was a child, after catching an infection from him, and he was brought up by three aunts, who sent him to Aldenham School. He went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, but was called up for wartime service in the Royal Ulster Rifles, where he served as a lieutenant. After the war he joined the Ballet Rambert as a dancer, but then turned to photography, specialising in ballet shots. He also worked as a conjuror and interior decorator.
In 1949, he married Aurelia Pascual y Pérez, a refugee from the Spanish Civil War, and returned with her to her home. They had one son and three daughters together; they later divorced. He wrote a well-regarded travel book, Another Spain, published in 1952, about Spain's undiscovered countryside and in particular Aurelia's home village of Quintanarraya.
While in Seville for the Holy Week celebrations there, he met the director Peter Brook.
The public source identifies “Mike Raven” as british artist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mike, Raven and British.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6848508. VIAF identifies the subject as 31952580. The Library of Congress control number is nr2005009136. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 1997, 1892 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mike Raven” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.