Early years
Roy Colin Strong was born in Winchmore Hill, North London and attended Edmonton County School in Edmonton.
He earned a first class honours degree in history at Queen Mary College, University of London. He then earned his Ph.D from the Warburg Institute, University of London 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 my thinking.” In 2007 Strong lists his qualifications as, DLitt PhD FSS.
Career
National Portrait Gallery
He became assistant keeper of the National Portrait Gallery in 1959, and was its director 1967-73: Sir Roy came to prominence at age 32 when he became the youngest director of the National Portrait Gallery. 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 wow 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, Sir Roy Strong pinpoints the exhibition "Beaton Portraits 1928-1968" as a turning point in the gallery’s history. Strong chose fashion photographer Cecil Beaton as a catalyst for change says much about the glamour and appeal of the photographer’s work. But even so, it seems unlikely that anyone could have predicted the sheer scale of the exhibition’s success. "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 & Albert Museum
In 1973, aged 39, he became the youngest director of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London. In his tenure, until 1987, he presided over its exhibitions 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 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."
Television
In 2008 Strong hosted a six-part TV reality series The Diets That Time Forgot. He acted as the Director of the fictitous 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.
Writings
In 1999, he published The Spirit of Britain: A Narrative History of the Arts, a widely acclaimed 700-page study of British arts through two millennia. In 2005, he published Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy.
Personal life
Marriage
Roy Strong married Julia Trevelyan Oman in 1971, and he was knighted in 1982. The arts world was astonished when "Strong abandoned the bachelor life and 'eloped' with Julia Trevelyan Oman, marrying her at Wilmcote church, near Stratford-upon-Avon, on 10 September 1971 with a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Julia Trevelyan Oman was 41 and her husband 35...they enjoyed a belated honeymoon in Tuscany."
Herefordshire
Sir Roy lives in the village of Much Birch, which lies south of Hereford on the A49 trunk road. Here, with his late wife, the designer, Dr Julia Trevelyan Oman, who died in 2003, he designed one of England's largest post-war formal gardens, the Laskett. In 1995 he and his wife commissioned the artist Jonathan Myles-Lea to paint a 'portrait' of the house and gardens and the painting the Laskett was completed the same year. Sir Roy now works full-time as a writer and broadcaster. He has lived in Herefordshire since 1973-74 and he and his wife conceived the Laskett garden in autumn 1974.
From spring 2010 (22 April onwards) the Laskett Gardens will be open to the public by appointment.
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."
Anglicanism
A practising Anglican, Strong is an altar server at Hereford Cathedral, as well as being high steward of Westminster Abbey. He was previously its high bailiff. In this capacity he attended the funeral service of the Queen Mother in 2001. 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?), Gresham College | Lectures and Events 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 recommends someone taking "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.
