Sir Portrait: 30 Portraits of Roy Strong

About Sir Roy Strong

JOHN SWANNELL assisted David Bailey for four years before setting up his own studio working for magazines such as Vogue Harpers & Queen the Sunday Times and Tatler. In 1993 he was awarded a Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society; one of the youngest members to have achieved this status at the time. In 1994 Diana The Princess of Wales personally commissioned John to photograph her together with her sons. In 2012 John was commissioned to take the only official portrait of HM The Queen to celebrate Her Diamond Jubilee. The National Portrait Gallery in London has over fifty of his photographs and his work is also in the collections of the V&A The National Gallery of Scotland and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. SIR ROY STRONG is a well-known historian and garden writer lecturer critic and columnist and a regular contributor to television and radio programmes. He was Director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1967 to 1973 and of the Victoria and 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. He has published a number of highly acclaimed books. Sir Roy lives in Hereford where with his late wife Julia Trevelyan Oman who died in 2003 he designed one of England''s largest post-war formal gardens. He now works full-time as a writer and broadcaster.