Author(s): Sir Roy Strong

Biography & Memoir

For over half a century Roy Strong has amused, enraged and inspired the British public, firstly in his capacity as the flamboyant Director of two great national institutions - the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum - and then as a prolific author, broadcaster, garden expert and historian, not to mention diarist. Splendours and Miseries, the first volume of his diaries, covers his early meteoric career, revealing him to be not just a mercurial and brilliant administrator, but also a shrewd observer of the glittering social and political world into which he was drawn. In these pages we meet David Hockney in his studio, the poignant figure of Cecil Beaton in decline, Nureyev fizzing with ideas, the Philistine Mrs Thatcher and the indestructible Diana Cooper among many others, including a bevy of the Royal Family - in particular, the Queen Mother in a portrait of an irresistible woman, lovingly drawn. And throughout the diaries runs the thread of an exceptional marriage, following his elopement with the designer Julia Trevelyan Oman. Splendours and Miseries provides a unique panorama of the world of the arts, fashion and society, taking us from the outrageous Swinging Sixties to the hard-edged glitz of Thatcher's Britain.