Roy Strong At 80: Photographs By John Swannell

A new National Portrait Gallery display and book in June will celebrate the eightieth birthday of its former director Sir Roy Strong who, with photographer John Swannell, has devised a series of portraits that transport Sir Roy through time, inventing and reinventing him as an array of historical characters.

With a sharp eye for period style and dress, careful reference to the composition, lighting and poses of famous historical portraits, and with flashes of tongue-in-cheek wit, the display and book is the culmination of a five-year project in which the sitter takes on figures as varied as Henry VIII, Toulouse Lautrec, Rasputin and President Abraham Lincoln.

Together with Sir Roy’s diaries which relate the stories behind the sittings, the fully-illustrated book, published by Frances Lincoln, makes for a remarkable photographic essay of a man dubbed 'Sir Portrait'. Sir Portrait is a work of playful connoisseurship, and a celebration of a life in portraits.

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.

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, Princess of Wales personally commissioned John to photograph her together with her sons. In 2012 John Swannell was commissioned to take the only official portrait of The Queen to celebrate Her Diamond Jubilee.

The National Portrait Gallery, London, has 128 of John Swannell’s 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.