Roy Strong, (August 23, 1935) is an English historian, a museum curator, and a writer, He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, in his long career. He was knighted in 1983, and so he is now Sir Roy Strong. He married in 1971, Julia Trevelyan Oman, herself of a distinguished ancestry in the scholarly world. They honeymooned in Tuscany, and in a few years had acquired an old house in Herefordshire. There they planted a garden, which has recently become an admission-taking enterprise. The garden is called The Laskett, not just 'Lasket', for reasons which are no doubt clear to the English. His wife was also allied to the arts, and they worked together to create a remarkable garden,of several acres, around their home.
A few titles, from the many books he wrote, give a nice sense of the man:
Lost Treasures of Britain: Five Centuries of Creation and Destruction, (1990),
Country Life, 1897-1997: The English Arcadia, (1996),
The Roy Strong Diaries 1967–1987, (1997)
A Little History of the English Country Church, (2007)
A Country Life: At Home in the English Countryside (2003) includes a quote that gives us a glimpse of their life:
Walking the Cat...The decision had been reached that our Maine Coon cats were not to roam. ... Seven tiny cat biscuits are counted out carefully for each cat. This, they know, is the signal for their harnesses to be put on...
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