Sir Roy Strong CH

A distinguished historian, gardener, designer and all round polymath. Roy’s magnum opus The Story of Britain (Jonathan Cape) hit the bestseller lists in 1997 and became a classic still in print. He was Director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1967 to 1973 and of the Victoria & Albert Museum from 1974 to 1987. 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. In 1981 he was created a Companion of Honour in recognition of his service to the nation’s culture and in 2016 he was made a Companion of Honour in recognition of his contribution to the country’s cultural life.

He has written over fifty books on a wide variety of subjects including history, biography, art and garden design as well as publishing his diaries, already recognised as the record of an age. His most recent books are The Elizabethan Image (Yale, 2019) and the third volume of his diaries Types and Shadows (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020).

In 2022, William Collins published a revised and updated edition of Coronation: A History of the British Monarchy, Sir Roy’s comprehensive history of this extraordinary and fundamental rite, speculating on the revision of its rituals and pageantry now called for in order to reflect the role of the monarchy in the twenty-first century.

Photo courtesy of Paul Lewis