Dr Roy Strong

You've been responsible for some very imaginative special exhibitions. Which have been the most successful?

The one That has thrilled me most was the last one called the Elizabethan Image at the Tape Gallery, which closed not long ago. And in a way that sort of contained everything I loved since since since, you know, I was a child. It was a whole panorama of of English painting through the children and Elizabethan Jacobean periods, done with theme rooms and music and excitement and surprise.

Now a lot of staff time must be taken up dealing with people who bring pictures to be examined. Do you make many valuable finds this way?

Things do come in from time to time. No, I would say that we don't make many spectacular discoveries. Most of them are made in the sale room. Um but I do think this is an important public service. I mean i abroad it's not done at all.

Which little triumphs do you look back on in the same room [the sale room] with most pleasure?

I look back less less in my own era, I thought the most exciting thing of all was sort of two directors ago, and I was at the gallery, when we bought in a minor sale room um a portrait of Milton as a young man for twenty two pounds. And it was the long-lost portrait of Milton as a young boy when Aubrey, in his brief life, says that he was so fair they called him the Lady of Christ College. We had a wonderful time cleaning it because the nineteenth century lips came off in the eighteenth century and then eventually one got down to the seventeenth century lips underneath and all the inscriptions were there as recorded in the past. It was very exciting.