SEE ALSO:
https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2018/10/three-heroes-of-conservationism.html
Sir Roy
Colin Strong, CH, FRSL (born 23 August 1935) is an English art historian,
museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has served as
director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert
Museum in London. Strong was knighted in 1982.
Early years
Roy Colin
Strong was born at Winchmore Hill (then in Middlesex), the third son of
commercial traveller (for a hat manufacturer) George Edward Clement Strong, and
Mabel Ada Strong (née Smart). He attended nearby Edmonton County School, a
grammar school in Edmonton.
Strong
graduated with a first class honours degree in history from Queen Mary College,
University of London. He then earned his Ph.D from the Warburg Institute and
became a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. His
passionate interest in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth I was sidelined
"while he wrote a thesis on Elizabethan Court Pageantry supervised by the
Renaissance scholar, Dame Frances Yates who (he says) restructured and
re-formed ...[his]... thinking." In 2007 Strong listed his qualifications
as DLitt PhD FSA.
Career
National
Portrait Gallery
He became
assistant keeper of the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1959. In 1967,
aged 32, he was appointed its director, a post he held until 1973. He set about
transforming its conservative image with a series of extrovert shows, including
"600 Cecil Beaton portraits 1928–1968." Dedicated to the culture of
the 1960s and 1970s, Sir Roy went on to amuse audiences at the V&A in 1974
with his collection of fedora hats, kipper ties and maxi coats. By regularly
introducing new exhibitions he doubled attendance.
Reflecting
on his time as director of the National Portrait Gallery, Strong pinpointed the
Beaton exhibition as a turning point in the gallery’s history. "The public
flocked to the exhibition and its run was extended twice. The queues to get in
made national news. The Gallery had arrived", Strong wrote in the
catalogue to Beaton Portraits, the more recent exhibition of Beaton that ran at
the gallery until 31 May 2004.
Victoria
and Albert Museum
In 1973,
aged 38, he became the youngest director of the Victoria and Albert Museum
(V&A), London. In his tenure, until 1987, he presided over its The
Destruction of the Country House (1974, with Marcus Binney and John Harris),
Change and Decay: the future of our churches (1977), and The Garden: a
Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening (1979), all of which have
been credited with boosting their conservationist agendas. In 1977, following
government cuts, he oversaw the closure of the much-lamented Circulation
Department of the V&A, which organised tours of the collection around
Britain. In 1980, "he was awarded the prestigious Shakespeare Prize by the
FVS Foundation of Hamburg in recognition of his contribution to the arts in the
UK." He was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's President's Medal and
Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant
contribution to the art of photography in 2003.
Television
Among other
work for television, in 2008 Strong hosted a six-part TV reality series The
Diets That Time Forgot.[10] He acted as the Director of the fictitious
Institute of Physical Culture, where nine volunteers spent 24 days testing
three weight loss diets and fitness regimes that were popular in the late
Victorian (William Banting) and Edwardian periods (Horace Fletcher) and the
'roaring' Twenties (Dr Lulu Hunt Peters). The weekly series was first aired on
18 March on Channel 4.
Writing
Strong is a
notable scholar of Renaissance art, especially English Elizabethan portraiture,
on which he has written many books and articles (see bibliography section). His
diaries from 1967 to 1987 were published in 1999, as was The Spirit of Britain:
A Narrative History of the Arts, a widely acclaimed 700-page popular history of
the arts in Britain through two millennia. In 2005, he published Coronation: A
History of Kingship and the British Monarchy. He had a monthly column in the
Financial Times for much of the 1970s and 1980s, and has written articles for
many other magazines and newspapers. In 2000 he wrote Gardens Through the Ages
and is a patron of the Plantation Garden, Norwich.
Personal
life
Marriage
On 10
September 1971, at the age of 35, Strong married 41-year-old theatrical
designer Julia Trevelyan Oman, at Wilmcote church, near Stratford-upon-Avon,
with a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury. They enjoyed a
belated honeymoon in Tuscany. She died in 2003 of pancreatic cancer.
Herefordshire
Strong
lives in the village of Much Birch in Herefordshire. Here, with his wife, he
designed one of Britain's largest post-war formal gardens, the Laskett Gardens.
In 1995 he and his wife commissioned the artist Jonathan Myles-Lea to paint a
portrait of the house and gardens, which was completed the same year. Since
2010 the gardens have been open to the public by appointment, for groups of
more than twenty. An offer by Strong to bequeath Laskett Gardens to the
National Trust was rejected in 2014 after it was deemed that they fail to
"reach the high rung of national and historic importance". Strong
later announced plans to have the gardens "destroyed" on his death.
He later relented and in 2015 agreed to bequeath the gardens to the
horticultural charity "Perennial" (Gardeners' Royal Benevolent
Society).
After
leaving the V&A, Strong published a set of diaries that became infamous for
its often critical assessments of figures in the art and political worlds. It
has been rumoured that he has retained a set for posthumous publication. Jan
Moir commented in 2002: "His bitchy, hilarious diaries caused a storm when
they were published in 1997 and although he has no plans at present to publish
another set, he is keeping a private diary again."
Gardening
Strong
subsequently designed gardens for Gianni Versace at Versace's Lake Como villa,
Villa Fontanelle, and Versace's Miami house, Casa Casuarina. At Versace's
behest Strong designed an Italian garden at Elton John's residence, Woodside,
in Old Windsor, Berkshire.
Anglicanism
A
practising Anglican, Strong is an altar server at Hereford Cathedral, as well
as High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey.[18] In this
capacity he attended the funeral service of the Queen Mother in 2002. On 30 May
2007, in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, he delivered the annual Gresham
College Special Lecture, entitled "The Beauty of Holiness and its Perils
(or what is to happen to 10,000 parish churches?)," which was deeply
critical of the status quo. He said: "little case can be made in the
twenty-first century for an expensive building to exist for a service once a
week or month lasting an hour," and he wanted to "take an axe and
hatchet the utterly awful kipper coloured choir stalls and pews, drag them out
of the church and burn them," and "letting in the local
community" in order to preserve many rural churches in Britain.
Diary Of A Former Somebody
Tue, Jul 8,
1997, 01:00
ROBERT
O'BYRNE
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/diary-of-a-former-somebody-1.88884
By HERE is
a book which might just as easily be called Diary Of A Former Somebody. There
was a period in London when the now-near invisible Sir Roy Strong appeared to
be truly ubiquitous, popping up on every committee and at every social
gathering in the city. His rise still looks meteoric, although it actually
began with almost a decade of preparation.
In 1967,
when these diaries begin, the former grammar school boy from north London had
just been appointed, at the age of 31, to be director of the National Portrait
Gallery. Strong's youth, as much as his non- establishment origins, was the
subject of much comment and he capitalised on this by instigating a series of
exhibitions and room refurbishments which kept both him and his gallery in the
public eye.
The late
1960s witnessed his social and professional apogee; as these pages recall, he
was taken up by a succession of admirers such as Cecil Beaton and Lady Antonia
Fraser, delighted to discover an academic who was also an amusing dinner
companion. Strong seems somewhat baffled by this attention, unable to see in
himself what everyone else has spotted.
But he
revelled in publicity, dressing up like a latter-day dandy and accepting every
invitation which came his way. Although he could be - and often was - dismissed
as a lightweight, the quality of his own publications (his speciality has
always been late-Tudor and Jacobean iconography) gave Strong credibility in the
museum world.
Thus, when
the imperious Sir John Pope-Hennessy decided to retire as director of the
Victoria & Albert Museum, the job went to Strong. Imagining that the
charmed existence he had led at the National Portrait Gallery would continue in
this new environment, his initial response was one of near ecstasy. However,
the mood very rapidly changed and from 1974, when he took up his position at
the V & A until the end of this book (when he resigned), the impression is
one of near total gloom.
Strong's
timing was unfortunate. He arrived in South Kensington just as recession hit
Britain and this was followed by the premiership of Mrs Margaret Thatcher, who
could never see any purpose in cultural affairs. Furthermore, there were
intractable problems inside the museum, with both trade unions and senior
members of staff traditionally at constant war with the director.
When Strong
finally left, his successor, Elizabeth Esteve-Coll - who was to suffer even
worse indignities than he - remarked: "This place has traumatised
you." On the evidence of these diaries, such would seem to be the case.
Even after a decade away from the V & A, Strong's sense of outrage at what
he had to tolerate remains palpable.
Other than
as an act of catharsis, it is hard to see what purpose the book serves. A
certain number of old scores are certainly settled and Strong makes the most of
every opportunity to demonstrate just what a hard- working and exemplary museum
director he was. The pity is that, as published, his diaries really do have
little other raison d'etre. Strong is not a natural diarist, as the erratic
nature of his entries makes plain. He admits to sketchiness and often has
recourse to a series of letters written to an old friend in the Netherlands.
Only a handful of people come to life in his prose, with Princess Margaret
regularly providing a star turn as an unhappy and demanding guest.
But unlike
Beaton, among others, Strong's ability to sum up a social engagement or sketch
a character in just a few lines is weak and he is prone to repetition; poor
editing means that almost identical descriptions of the Queen Mother's
drawing-room are presented on two occasions. It is rather dispiriting to see a
writer describe his own work at one stage as "frankly an uninspiring
read". To end as Strong does on more than one occasion: sad really.
Book of the week: The Roy Strong Diaries 1988–2003
Country
Life
November
23, 2016
Scenes and
Apparitions: The Roy Strong Diaries 1988–2003
Despite
moments of grief and dismay, Sir Roy’s latest volume of diaries is happier than
his last, says Michael Hall.
Sir Roy
Strong’s previous volume of diaries is so firmly imprinted on my memory that
I’d forgotten it came out as long ago as 1997. Covering the years 1967 to 1987,
it was a sharp self-portrait of a cultural leader at the centre of metropolitan
life, as director of first the National Portrait Gallery and then the V&A.
This new volume begins just after he has—with relief—quit the V&A for life
as a freelancer in the country, earning his money from television, books and
journalism—not least for Country Life.
Like
everyone in his situation, Sir Roy frets about deadlines and finding enough
money to pay the next tax bill, but, compared to the last volume, which was
eye-openingly frank about the miseries of running a major museum, this is a
happy book. Although it encompasses tragedy—the murder of his friend Gianni
Versace—and concludes in grief, with the death from cancer of his wife, Julia
Trevelyan Oman, it is, in essence, a portrait of emotional and creative
fulfilment, in marriage, friendships, work and, in particular, the celebrated
garden that he and his wife created at their Herefordshire home, the Laskett.
Sir Roy
tells us that he often didn’t keep a daily diary, but would write up events
that seemed to him worthy of record. as a result, there are some splendid
set-piece descriptions of occasions ranging from Elton John’s 50th-birthday
party (‘like an over-grown schoolboy dressed as Prince Charming at the ball’)
to a concert for the Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace (‘any sense of style and
much else seems to have left the place’).
there is
plenty of comedy, often at Sir Roy’s expense: when he sits for a portrait by
Lord Snowdon, the result ‘was a cross between Heathcliff and a rent boy in old
age, but, as Tony said, “there’s the cover for your next book”’. There’s a very
funny account of entertaining the irredeemably urban Antonia Fraser and Harold
Pinter at the Laskett—their ‘Mercedes was iced up so Julia went to the garage
and brought back her plastic scraper. Harold stood and looked on as Julia
cleaned the windows and then, when she’d finished, stepped forward and said:
“You’ve missed that bit.” Exit Pinters’.
Gardens and
gardeners feature prominently—Susana Walton at La Mortella, Ian Hamilton Finlay
at Little Sparta and Rosemary Verey’s 80th-birthday party are highlights.
Sometimes the array of names is dizzying: boldly, Sir Roy has dispensed with
footnotes, relying instead on a (less than comprehensive) list of characters at
the back of the book. at first, I was disconcerted, but the absence of notes
keeps the book buoyant and easy to read.
There is shadow
as well as sunshine in the garden. Sir Roy is dismayed by the British political
establishment’s indifference to heritage, which develops an aggressive edge
after the Labour landslide of 1997. By the time of the 2001 general Election,
he has come to detest New Labour: ‘I loathe their derision of the monarchy,
Church, law, of any ancient established institution or tradition.’ That
explains why his major books of the period, notably The Story of Britain, have
such a strong political agenda.
Sir Roy’s
liberal Anglo-Catholic faith is central to his life and, in 2000, he was made
high Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. This gave him
an official place at many of the great royal ceremonies of the past 15 years,
including the ‘extraordinary and very moving’ lying-in-state and funeral of his
old friend the Queen Mother in 2002.
The year
before, the Royal Maundy had been distributed at the Abbey: ‘It brought tears
to my eyes. The ancient prayers made me realise that these must have been used
for centuries. Gloriana herself must have heard them.’ Nobody but Sir Roy could
have written that and I fervently hope that he doesn’t keep us waiting another
20 years for the next instalment.
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