Sir Roy Strong

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is the historian, gardener, and diarist Sir Roy Strong.

Presenter0:39

He stormed the establishment in the nineteen sixties, a proto meritocrat, in possession of a sharp intellect, fizzing ambition, and a brown velvet frock coat.

Presenter0:49

An avowedly unhappy and clever child, he had first turned to history and art for stimulation and solace, setting down a template for a working life that would lead him to be the youngest ever director of the National Portrait Gallery, and later to run the Vienna.

Presenter1:04

But such early success left him with a fundamental problem. Having fulfilled his wildest dreams by the age of thirty eight, what was he to do with the rest of his life? Listener, he has not been idle. He says Looking back, the whole of my life has been fleeing my family, struggling to detach myself, get as far away as possible, and make a life and a home full of the old fashioned virtues I was never surrounded by as a child. So, Sir Roystrong, have you succeeded, I wonder, in that ambition?

Sir Roy Strong1:35

Yes, I think I have.

Sir Roy Strong1:37

I certainly succeeded in making a a life and a surrounding of my own. I think in a way that's rather harsh to say one fleed from one's family, but to an extent at that stage one did. It gave one the drive and one saw a vision of a uh a a a a different world, uh a a world of art and design and history and glamour and romance and all sorts of other things. And one had to somehow

Sir Roy Strong2:06

Get out of what was.

Sir Roy Strong2:08

a lower middle class background, and I don't despise that, and it's not true altogether to say that there were no virtues there, in the sense that one was always brought up to be patriotic, to work hard, to be d dutiful and obedient. And I've always been grateful for that kind of thing, but for somebody rather exotic like myself as I turned out to be, I couldn't exactly flourish in a terrace house in North London.

Presenter2:34

I'm worried slightly that that quote might do you a disservice. It is picked from quite some time back, and as you came in to day you walked through the door, and I saw your eyes sort of sparkling with optimism and vigour, and the first thing you said to me was, I hope we're going to have some fun. You seem full of optimism and good humour.

Sir Roy Strong2:49

I'll be eighty next year, and I'm now thinking, well, how am I going to get through that decade? Go for it. I mean, it's like the speech I gave when I was seventy. I said, I'm sick to death of hearing from friends who are going to sheltered housing. I said, My old age is going to be exactly the reverse. More house, more garden, more absolutely everything.

Presenter3:06

Oh, I think we are going to have some fun. Tell me about your first disc this morning, then, Sir Roystrong. What are we going to hear, and why have you chosen this? Well, I've chosen.

Sir Roy Strong3:14

Uh part of William Walton's coronation march, Crown Imperial.

Sir Roy Strong3:19

I'm a monarchist, I always have been, and I'm deeply honoured to to hold the office at Westminster Abbey of High Bailiff in Search of the Sanctuary, and been present at so many services and things and to be just part of that, have the honour of being part of that.

Sir Roy Strong3:37

My life, most of what I've written about, is really about England. Uh practically everything I've ever written or done in my life is a uh a care for this country and its history.

Speaker 43:37

My life

Presenter4:51

That was part of William Walton's Crown Imperial from the coronation march performed there by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Groves. Sir Roy Strong, you've written a number of books. I want to concentrate

Sir Roy Strong5:03

Too many.

Presenter5:04

I want to concentrate for a moment on your diaries. Why publish diaries?

Sir Roy Strong5:09

Well, I allowed ten years to elapse before I published those diaries. I don't know whether they were written with the idea of publication or not. And they went back to someone saying to me, you're a very young man and you occupy a very important position. You'll meet all sorts of interesting people. You ought to write it down. Then, of course, 1967, I became director of the Portrait Gallery at 31, and Cecil Beaton entered my life, and his diaries always absolutely fascinated me. So I began to keep a diary. But why published in 1997? Well, I'm not going to shy away from the fact there was to a degree a financial motive because when I resigned the VA when I was 52 I was left with £12,000 a year to live on and the diaries of course caused a sensation and they're basically less about the museum than somebody from nowhere who suddenly entered a brilliant dazzling social scene and as Beatrix Miller the great editor of Vogue for the 60s said to me darling you're just like a child that's never been in a toy shop before

Presenter6:02

Let me give people who haven't read them a little flavour. In your diaries you describe variously Plucido Domingo as fat and florid, David Owen as totally humourless. Jackie Ornas, as you say, had enormous knuckles covered with sticking plaster. I wonder if you noticed after the publishing in nineteen ninety seven whether you got fewer invites than you had before.

Sir Roy Strong6:21

Yeah.

Presenter6:21

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong6:21

Not really.

Presenter6:24

You don't think people were worried that you might uh you know put pen to paper after you've been to theirs for supper? They are what I thought and observed at the time.

Sir Roy Strong6:27

Paper off, you've been to theirs for suffering.

Presenter6:31

During your time as director of the National Portrait Gallery in the V and A also, you would have been surrounded by beautiful things. I wonder if I were to press you to pick out just a couple of highlights from your time professionally w at those places, what would they be?

Sir Roy Strong6:47

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong6:48

Well, I think from the point of view of the portrait gallery, the most important thing I did was to get them to begin to collect portraits of living people. And that has absolutely transformed the gallery. Together with the Beaton exhibition was a landmark. It was the first time there'd ever been a major exhibition of a living photographer in a national museum or gallery. Those are two things for that. In the case of the VNA, the heritage series of exhibitions, of which the first in 1974 was called The Destruction of the Country House, it went down as a landmark. It told the story of the loss of a thousand houses, of the threats that were besieging them, and really created the notion of heritage and that such things weren't just the products of rich affluent people in the past, but also part of a kind of communal heritage in a way that we should care about and love.

Presenter7:37

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong7:37

Let's have

Presenter7:37

Some more music, Sir Roystrong. Tell me about your second choice of the morning. What are we going to hear now?

Sir Roy Strong7:43

Well, this I adore operetta. In 1949, I was taken to see Ivan Verlo. We very rarely have ever went to the theatre in King's Rhapsody. And so this is a song sung by Vanessa Lee, and it was romantic, and I've never lost that taste for operetta. It sweeps one off into a world of high camp and glamour and everything I just go along with. Why not?

Presenter8:43

Some day my heart will awake from Ivor Novello's King Rhapsody, sung there by Vanessa Lee with Harry Akers and his orchestra. Sir Roy Strong, you once said of your father he would sit at home dominating the radio dial. T tell me more about this character.

Presenter8:59

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong8:59

Well, I was trying

Sir Roy Strong9:01

Uh the I always met the extraordinary my eldest brother.

Sir Roy Strong9:04

said something only when I I I wrote an early autobiography recently and uh he read the opening chapter'cause I wanted to get it all right and he said everything you wrote wrote was exactly as it was, but the one thing that you probably didn't know that your that our parents were happy before nineteen thirty nine.

Sir Roy Strong9:23

So something happened with the outbreak of war which absolutely kind of broke him. He was in the First World War, and he just became a kind of sleeping reclusive. I mean, I I think things like this stick in my mind. He would say to my mother, Take your children out of the room.

Sir Roy Strong9:36

I don't remember a single note of affection ever being extended by him. He he was a hypochondriac. He sat there by his desk and he controlled the radio. Fortunately he liked the the palm court. So so I got lots of Someday Your Heart Will Awake and everything akin to that. But I mean the marriage had obviously gone on the rocks by then. And divorce, I think, in that kind of circumstance was un

Sir Roy Strong10:04

well, you know, with the dreadful social stigma then. And don't forget, my two brothers were evacuated during the war into the countryside, so I was just lonely, cripplingly shy child.

Sir Roy Strong10:17

Um in that house.

Presenter10:19

Um you've said that you are um you yourself now and subsequently are a minor monument to social mobility. I'm wondering as as a as a little boy growing up how conscious you were of uh the class system and your place in it. I mean would you f

Sir Roy Strong10:34

For example. I think you couldn't get anything cursy more more um class-ridden than what I call the suburb the the suburbs. I mean just going along the road of shock horror and a taxi driver moved in as though it was lowering the tone. I mean the whole thing was preposterous. It's probably all vanished now but I remember it very much. And certainly at school for instance the grammar school I went to certain parents could afford elo elocution lessons so that their children would speak better. And I remember doing what was it, Radio London with that wonderful man who looked at me, narrowed his eyes and said, you changed your voice didn't you? And I just looked back at him.

Presenter10:34

No, I think

Sir Roy Strong11:13

And he was he got a first at LSC, and I said, Yes, if you had come up when I did.

Sir Roy Strong11:19

You would have had to.

Sir Roy Strong11:21

But also I was influenced by going to the theatre, and once you heard somebody like Geel could speak.

Sir Roy Strong11:26

Shakespeare

Presenter11:27

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong11:27

You you somehow long

Presenter11:28

For a different voice. Let's hear another of your choices, Roystrom. Tell me about this third piece. What are we going to hear? Where

Sir Roy Strong11:35

Well, I always loved the ballet and at that period I was always first at art and his and I wanted to design for the stage and of course there was one great production after the war which I ache to see and that was The Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden which opened the Opera House in 1946 with the scenery and costumes by Oliver Messel. And the next bit I've chosen is the code of the sleeping beauty because at the end suddenly the whole cast turns towards the audience. Well really they're turning towards the imperial box with the czar and the whole family there and this is very stately music as they move forwards and bow to them. And of course I went on to write a thesis about Elizabethan pageantries. I've always had a huge feeling about ceremonial and it's a kind of wonderful moment I think.

Presenter13:27

Lakoda in Act Three of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, played there by the Kirov Orchestra of St. Petersburg, conducted by Valieri Gyergiev. Um, Sir Roy Strong, tell me about your aunt Elsie.

Sir Roy Strong13:38

Who will not?

Sir Roy Strong13:40

It's what John Osborne called a better class of person. Aunt Elsie had escaped from a working class terrace house in Wood Green, and married up

Sir Roy Strong13:49

and uh lived in in Surrey, in Purley, and she again had completely changed her voice.

Sir Roy Strong13:56

and and completely kind of manufactured herself.

Sir Roy Strong14:00

And so she gave me a glimpse of a different sort of life.

Presenter14:04

And did you visit Aunt Hill?

Sir Roy Strong14:05

Yeah.

Presenter14:05

Yes. And when you were sitting in Aunt Elsie's lounge, did you think I'd like a piece of this?

Sir Roy Strong14:11

Uh certainly, but um

Sir Roy Strong14:15

Yes, but I was quickly to move on to thinking I would want a something considerably more. And

Sir Roy Strong14:23

Once my career took off and I was sitting in the royal box at Covent Garden next to Lady Diana Cooper and Lord Droyd, I just sat there and I thought this is really rather awful of me, but I actually feel I'm actually where I should have been from the start.

Presenter14:36

Yes. You see, in everything that I've read about your childhood I I've felt that you sound as though you were an absolute cuckoo in the nest, as if you were there thinking, This I just don't quite belong here.

Sir Roy Strong14:47

Yes, my wife always had that theory, and I was born out of contact.

Sir Roy Strong14:51

But I escaped.

Presenter14:53

Did you always have it in mind to escape?

Presenter14:55

Did you sing I

Sir Roy Strong14:56

No, I didn't see a way of escape.

Presenter14:59

You got a first in history at Queen Mary College London, then you went on to get a PhD. Um during that time you of course were always living at home. I mean you didn't have the funds really to be ongoing.

Sir Roy Strong15:07

Yes, I think that was again increasingly difficult because uh as one became more and more educated and one's taste changed, you were a kind of alien being living in a in a world that one had really mentally and visually left.

Presenter15:22

So you had sort of educated a gulf between yourself and your family?

Sir Roy Strong15:27

Well, it it was inevitable that it happened. You felt it.

Presenter15:32

But that's what I'm wondering. Do you d do you ever have cause to look back at that? I'm wondering.

Sir Roy Strong15:34

Do you ever have calls to look back at those and wonder?

Sir Roy Strong15:37

really began to, you know, soar socially.

Sir Roy Strong15:43

It wasn't going to help to tell them everywhere I'd been and the rest. It was kinder not to say it.

Presenter15:48

Tell me what's next, then, Sir Roy.

Sir Roy Strong15:50

Strong, we're on your fourth.

Sir Roy Strong15:52

Well, the Virgin Queen entered my life with a vengeance.

Sir Roy Strong15:56

I suppose it was because I was interested in theatre, interested in dress, and who had more dresses than absolutely anybody else? Queen Elizabeth I? I mean, she was a walking Christmas tree forever. And uh

Sir Roy Strong16:08

I had a wonderful history teacher and she gave everything to me my family couldn't give me, Joan Henderson. She taught me all about Elizabethan England and we became obsessed by the portraits of Elizabeth I and began to collect snapshots and pictures of her and all the rest of it and form a card index. My deepest desire was to write a catalogue of her portraits, which indeed I eventually did and published in 1963. Anyway, Benjamin Britton's Gloriana. It has all the splendour and the poignancy and tragedy of Elizabethan England and of this great woman. And to me it is the the greatest modern evocation of that period. And I've chosen a bit at the end of that one where you hear her speak. It's as though England had gained a voice.

Speaker 417:34

Object needs.

Speaker 417:40

Oh my god.

Speaker 417:42

I know it's not quite a significant sign.

Speaker 417:51

Yeah.

Presenter17:56

That was part of Benjamin Britton's Gloriana, part of the end of Act One, Scene One, with the soloist there, Josephine Barstow. The orchestra and chorus was the Welsh national opera and it was conducted by Charles Macaris.

Presenter18:09

So you became, as we know, the youngest ever curator of a national collection in 1967, the National Portrait Gallery.

Presenter18:16

It had been a long-held ambition and you'd work there for a few years.

Presenter18:20

Exhilarating wa was it intimidating to be given that job also?

Sir Roy Strong18:25

Well, it was to begin with, do remember all the old hierarchies were in place. Although the aristocracy had lost their power in the House of Lords, they maintained it on all the boards and things of national collections. Although you were then beginning to get the arrival of academe professors and the rest of it, all the aristocratic members like Lord Kenyon would say about J H Plum, well, he's the sort of person that buys other people's silver, you know, looking down his nose, or he'd look at me and say about arrangement of busts, which I thought was absolutely brilliant. He said, I think I should tell you no gentleman would arrange his bust in such a way. So you had to cope with all that. Just a quick question. How should a gentleman...

Presenter19:00

And arrange his busts then.

Sir Roy Strong19:03

Oh, on on marble plints in a long row, along a corridor. In his house.

Presenter19:07

I imagine.

Sir Roy Strong19:07

Yeah, I I mean I'd arrange them up and down all over the place.

Presenter19:10

Yeah. Um and how did the trustees look upon you? Because by then all you had all the kit on, you know, you had the flouncy shirts and the

Sir Roy Strong19:18

Well, yes, I for for a time I I kind kind of conformed and then I thought, No, no, no, no, um I want to be myself, this is what's going to work. So I wore flowered shirts, regency jackets, jackets that had side vents practically up to the armpits.

Presenter19:35

And so you

Sir Roy Strong19:35

You

Presenter19:35

You appeared you you were working incredibly hard at the time. I'm sure a lot of your your the actual hours in a day were taken up working, but you you appeared at least to epitomise the swinging sixties in terms of how you looked. Were you swinging in the sixties?

Speaker 419:41

Yeah.

Speaker 419:46

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong19:46

Seasoned.

Sir Roy Strong19:51

Well, I was really an old fashioned sconer beneath all this froth.

Sir Roy Strong19:55

I really was,'cause I knew everything depended on knowledge and information and hard work. Um but I was a decorative figure, you know, in the evenings and all the rest of it. And I learnt very early on that the strength of a director doesn't lie

Sir Roy Strong20:11

quite on the support of the institution, it relies on the fact that you have support outside it.

Sir Roy Strong20:18

in the world of power and establishment and in the social world, and also from the public.

Sir Roy Strong20:24

I mean, I remember doing Instant Image nineteen seventy. It was Gerald Scarfe I got in to do the cartoons, David Hockney to do portraits and David Bailey. And of course it caused a s a sensation.

Presenter20:37

I get the feeling that you were probably thinking all the time, although you were being invited everywhere and saw everything that was going on, I I wonder if all this hard work and ambition actually stopped you sort of taking part in the more loosh aspects of the sixties and early seventies. Would that be right?

Sir Roy Strong20:52

Did you write? Yes, no, no, no, I never took part in that side. I didn't take drugs. And there wasn't a kind of sexual.

Sir Roy Strong20:59

Bean fist. No.

Presenter21:00

That was that a conscious decision on your part? Because Golden McClure

Sir Roy Strong21:03

But I think I'm very sort of wound up about that sort of thing.

Sir Roy Strong21:08

I knew I wanted to marry somebody.

Sir Roy Strong21:11

But I also knew that I was a very definite and rather, probably rather difficult character to be married to, and I always knew that if I married anyone,

Sir Roy Strong21:18

It should be somebody in their own right.

Sir Roy Strong21:22

That I would respect. I don't know whether this sounds a very odd thing to say. And I was lucky. I found that person.

Presenter21:30

We shall talk about that in just a moment. For now tell me about what we're going to hear. We're on your fifth choice of the morning.

Presenter21:36

Disc f

Speaker 421:37

Bah.

Sir Roy Strong21:37

I

Sir Roy Strong21:38

Well, one of the things we did in 1973, it was my last year at the Portrait Gallery, I wasn't a knowledge at the time, and we did a series of readings, totally innovatory, with scripts by really quite eminent people on different historical personages, Dame Flora Robson, Elizabeth I, things like that. The one I remember most was Sybil Thorndyke.

Sir Roy Strong22:00

Remembering Ellen Terry.

Sir Roy Strong22:02

It always brings tears to my eyes, because it it tells of the death of Ellen Terry, and also of her funeral, and I thought, That's how I want to go, and that's how I want it to be.

Speaker 122:14

Gordon Craig wrote of her last moments. She died in the morning sun, which shone warm and yellow on her.

Speaker 122:24

She set up.

Speaker 122:26

suddenly opened her eyes.

Speaker 122:29

and threw off fifty years as she fell.

Speaker 122:34

She became twenty-five to look at.

Speaker 122:38

She was once more Nellie Terry back again in the country.

Speaker 122:44

With little e day

Speaker 122:45

I'm little Teddy.

Speaker 122:48

and the one she had loved most of all.

Presenter22:52

Sybil Thorndyke remembers Ellen Terry. Just uh before we started listening to that, Sir Roystrong, you were talking about the fact that you felt singularly that you wanted to be married, and if you were to be married, it would be to somebody who was a person in their own right. So tell me about this person.

Sir Roy Strong23:09

Well, Julia Trevelyan Oman was certainly a person in her own right. She had a strong sense of family and I always say I didn't really have any family, so I was marrying into what I suppose one would describe as a descendant of one of the great Victorian intellectual families. And there was immediately a kind of rapport there.

Presenter23:29

And you didn't tell your mother?

Sir Roy Strong23:31

That you would not have.

Presenter23:31

You were either getting married or that you had gotten married.

Sir Roy Strong23:34

Well, after we married her, we rang up. Uh she was horrified. She didn't really want any of her sons to marry, because I think her her her three sons became the substitute for not having a happy marriage, I would have thought.

Sir Roy Strong23:46

I never had a quarrel with my wife ever about anything, and uh we just w went to live in the country on the borders of Wales to create the sort of family, to create the sort of life we wanted to.

Presenter24:00

And you've said that Julia kept you going during the most difficult of times professionally. I'm guessing that this might have been at the time that you were at the V and the V and

Sir Roy Strong24:07

Well the VNA firstly the VNA I was brought in to be a great reforming director in 1974 but it coincided, it was Conservative government with the miners' strike and uh we arrived and I sat in the office by candlelight and the Communist member of the textile department came in and shoved all her lights on to demonstrate solidarity with workers and boy we were off.

Sir Roy Strong24:28

Then with I was going to be promised all the money and staff to create a brand new service to the regions and then within eighteen months I was summoned to the Department of Education and told I had to do an exercise but tell nobody how to cut the staff of the gallery by ten, fifteen and twenty percent and I had to carry that cut through. I mean it was it was the most dreadful, dreadful thing on human terms.

Presenter24:53

You were director at the V and A for I think I'm right in saying because it's thirteen years. When you left, d do you think your career was fatally damaged by the fact that you had implemented such uh cuts and and caused such ill f

Sir Roy Strong25:05

You know oh goodness me, there's hardly anything that goes on at the V and A that I didn't touch in the midst of it all. In the end I got government, thanks to Margaret Thatcher. I got the V and A by Act of Parliament out of Government and got it free. We could do what we liked.

Presenter25:05

You know.

Presenter25:20

Why do you think then that you were not um offered plum rolls after that? What happened?

Sir Roy Strong25:27

Well, I have no idea. All I knew when I was 50, I thought I can't go on doing this. And Julia was marvellous. And I said, Look, we may have to sell the house and all the rest of it. She said, Your creativity in the museum parted company. So I left. From the day I resigned the VA, government treated me as though I was dead. I've never been asked to be on one board or help with one thing. But.

Presenter25:28

No idea all I

Sir Roy Strong25:49

If you look at anything I've written

Sir Roy Strong25:51

It's all about this country.

Sir Roy Strong25:53

It's about gardens, it's about heritage, it's about our churches, it's about thing after thing after thing that I care passionately about. Yeah.

Presenter26:02

I mean this is a on a very personal level. Did it hurt your feelings that you weren't asked to take on any

Presenter26:09

Significant role, either government-related or not, after you left the VA.

Sir Roy Strong26:14

Well, I've never been able to fanish f fathom out why.

Sir Roy Strong26:18

Yes, I did feel a bit bruised.

Sir Roy Strong26:20

The

Presenter26:20

Then you've got to get on with life.

Presenter26:22

Let's get on with the music. Um time for your sixth. Tell me about this.

Sir Roy Strong26:26

Well, this is very special. I wasn't there the first night. It was, I think, 1968. It is the opening sequence of one of the two ballets my wife did with Sir Frederick Ashton, based on Enigma Variations. It's a wonderful story because my wife, when she was at the Royal College of Art, had typhoid fever and she almost died. And as she came to she heard Elgar's music and she did a plot for a ballet and designed the scenery and costumes. And this magical, magical ballet, which always brings tears to my eyes whenever I see it. And this is just the opening sequence and

Sir Roy Strong26:59

Oh, well, I was a lucky man. I had thirty two years of

Sir Roy Strong27:04

That's two years of a great match.

Presenter28:14

That was the theme from Elgar's Enigma Variations, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. As you said, Sir Boystrong, you built a life with Julia in the country in Herefordshire, and you reimagined the interior of the house, and then together you created a garden, the Lasket, and as I understand it, your Pleached Lime Avenue is sixty-five yards long.

Sir Roy Strong28:36

Twice as long as the one at Sittinghurst.

Presenter28:38

Oh, I'd read three times longer than Sissing House.

Sir Roy Strong28:40

Oh no, it's only twice, but s but but sucks to you, V to Sackfield West, I say, with knobs on.

Presenter28:44

Where did you get the nerve to have that sort of vision for a garden? Was that Julia's doing, or did you think if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it properly?

Sir Roy Strong28:50

She was quite a plants person. In a way I in that garden I kind of fulfilled a kind of design drive that I always had. But I wasn't afraid of

Sir Roy Strong29:01

I suppose being really rather grand.

Presenter29:03

Um after a very short illness, your wife, Julia, died in the late summer of two thousand and three, and you decided, in your own words, to to to remake this garden. I think that was a that was an unusual and bold thing to do, given that it was the single thing that you had created so lovingly together. Why did you decide to do that?

Sir Roy Strong29:25

Well, you have to make a new life.

Sir Roy Strong29:27

I was sixty-eight when Julia died, she was seventy-three, and I always remember during those last weeks she looked at me and she said, But you have so much more to give.

Sir Roy Strong29:36

She was a very remarkable.

Sir Roy Strong29:40

She was a very remarkable woman in every sense of the word. Um and I know that she would wish only one thing of me, that I should be happy.

Sir Roy Strong29:49

And the garden by then was um really thirty years old, and after thirty years you really have to look critically at at a garden. And so I began first of all to

Sir Roy Strong30:02

to put the house in in order that I could live. You can't live in a shrine, but you must never lose memory.

Sir Roy Strong30:09

And then the garden was the same, and I began taking things out and remodeling and replanting.

Presenter30:15

As I understand it, you've helped, among many people, Sir Elton John and the Prince of Wales with their garden design. When you're taking the shears to to the Prince of Wales' prized Topiary and reimagining it, do you have to have a lot of nerve for that? No, it doesn't worry me a bit.

Presenter30:33

One shoulder.

Sir Roy Strong30:34

Yeah.

Presenter30:36

Well, I suppose

Sir Roy Strong30:38

Good ice

Presenter30:38

I suppose

Sir Roy Strong30:39

You'd be you'll be a l you wouldn't be much of a gardener, would you?

Presenter30:39

Beautiful.

Presenter30:41

Well, I'm having a goal, but no, I wouldn't be quite the guy I'd know you are.

Sir Roy Strong30:43

BAH

Sir Roy Strong30:44

No, no, I know how to do tofery.

Presenter30:46

I know I've I mean, I've seen pictures of the turpira you've done, but it's ve it's it's bold stuff.

Sir Roy Strong30:48

But it's fair

Presenter30:50

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong30:51

But I never

Sir Roy Strong30:53

Not being bowed.

Sir Roy Strong30:54

I'm rather proud of what I did for the Prince of Wales.

Presenter30:56

I understand that uh the couturier, the late Hardy Amos, said of your own garden, uh the Lasket, he said it looks like mister Putter goes to Versailles.

Sir Roy Strong31:05

Well, I loved Hardy, but he was a dreadful bitch. I laughed him to bits. Um I gave the address at his funeral. I know. I it it it's fine.

Presenter31:15

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong31:15

Uh Let's have some music. Tell me about

Presenter31:17

Yeah.

Sir Roy Strong31:17

But you're not going to be able to do it.

Presenter31:17

Two.

Sir Roy Strong31:18

Seven. Yeah. The Kinks, singing dedicated follower of fashion. After my wife died I always kept everything I wore labelled with the date, and it was all piled up in the attic, the whole lot down. And the BNA picked some things, and the Fashion Museum Barth took everything.

Sir Roy Strong31:34

entire room full of my clothes. And it it covers everything from you know, I had a great friendship with Versace, wonderful things from him, and then things from next.

Sir Roy Strong31:44

So it's not a bad idea to collect what one very fashion conscious man wore throughout his life.

Sir Roy Strong31:56

Is clothes allowed?

Sir Roy Strong31:58

But never square

Sir Roy Strong32:02

It will make or break him so he's got to buy the best Cause he's a dedicated follower of fashion.

Sir Roy Strong32:12

And when he does.

Sir Roy Strong32:15

His little round

Sir Roy Strong32:18

Y'all look good cheeks.

Sir Roy Strong32:20

From London Town

Speaker 432:22

Uh

Presenter32:25

That was the Kingston dedicated follower of fashion. Sir Roy Strong, we're going to send you to this desert island, as you know. How will you be all on your own?

Sir Roy Strong32:32

Uh

Sir Roy Strong32:33

Oh, I'm fine on my own. Both of us were. And it's very important when you're left on your own not to let the structure of life disintegrate. I'm a good cook. I cooked every meal for thirty-two years of marriage. I still lay the table, light two candles, and sit on my own. And I've got a wonderful PA Fiona. I've got two marvellous gardeners. And I've got a lovely fitness instructor who looks after me. There's a kind of extended family around me. And it's all right. It suits you.

Sir Roy Strong33:03

But

Presenter33:03

It's held together by affection.

Presenter33:06

Let's have your final piece, Sir Roystrong. Tell me what we're going to hear.

Sir Roy Strong33:09

I'm a

Sir Roy Strong33:11

Catholic variety, and this is just a a hymn out of the English hymnal for all the saints who from their labours rest, just sung by an

Presenter33:12

The volume

Sir Roy Strong33:21

An ordinary congregation. It means a great deal to me. I have a lot to do with the cathedral now in Hereford, where I'm an altar server. And uh

Sir Roy Strong33:31

I mean to be basic, the Christian faith has seen me through a lot in my life.

Sir Roy Strong33:36

In every sense of the word, and I'm deeply grateful to a number of particular priests who've been really extraordinary to me.

Speaker 433:48

Oh peace is

Speaker 433:55

Heals are me.

Speaker 434:00

Is that triumphs?

Speaker 434:05

God in the love to sing.

Speaker 434:37

Who is of the singing thy countless moments?

Presenter34:47

For all the saints who from their labours rest Sung by the Liverpool Cathedral Choir and the Mass Choirs of Merseyside. Time now, then, Roy, to give you our books, the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and you get to take another book along. What will yours be?

Sir Roy Strong35:01

It would be the Oxford Companion to Gardens, which is a large volume and it has entries of all the great historical and present gardens. Even the dear old Lasket gets three lines. It was the only autobiographical pl garden ever planted. It would just give me a memory of a joy I never knew that I was to have.

Sir Roy Strong35:20

It's yours. And a luxury too. What will your luxury be? Well, I want to know this may sound rather eccentric. When I was seventy-seven I had to give up jogging'cause my left knee gave way. And so I thought I'd take up cycling. But um it's very difficult to learn to balance at seventy seven. So my wonderful instructor came in one day and said, I've solved it for you. You're going to get a tricycle. I had visions of Margaret Rutherford with the basket on the handlebars and God knows what else. Anyway I had a custom built.

Sir Roy Strong35:47

Racing tricycle made. And I'm a great believer in exercise. I get aerobic exercise through that. And I adore it. I love doing new things. As you get older, why shut down? Start something new. It's great.

Sir Roy Strong36:00

The tricycle

Presenter36:00

Which disc would you save of these eight? I think it would have to be Enigma Variations. It's yours, the theme from Elgar's Enigma Variations. Sir Roystrom, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Sir Roy Strong36:14

for the privilege of doing it a second time.

Presenter36:57

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter37:00

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.