#roy strong

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Royal Gardens

Roy Strong

1992

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One of the reasons I am proud of being English is the generosity of the country to all comers.

Roy Strong, Visions of England

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Roy Strong | David Bailey | Financial Times

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The Royal Wedding was a modest affair... apart from the fashion chaos: Thats the waspish verdict of ROY STRONG, who had a ringside seat at Prince William's marriage to Kate Middleton - as he reveals in the second part of his mischievous new memoirs

The Royal Wedding was a modest affair… apart from the fashion chaos: Thats the waspish verdict of ROY STRONG, who had a ringside seat at Prince William’s marriage to Kate Middleton – as he reveals in the second part of his mischievous new memoirs

Writer Roy Strong is publishing a full collection of his diaries from 2006 to 2015

He details his attendance at Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding in 2011

He names Sally Bercow as the ‘most inappropriately dressed woman’ on the day

The book also tells stories of dinner with The Queen, remarking ‘she must have done her own make-up,’ when they met in 2007

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The Elizabethan Image - An Extract - Yale University Press London Blog

What can Elizabethan portraits tell us about the society in which they were created? In this extract from his latest book, Sir Roy Strong analyses the famous 'Darnley Portrait' of Elizabeth I.

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The Young Man amongst Roses by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1588. Source of the image

“Leslie Hotson noted that, with the exception of the golden-brown shadow hatching on the white peascod doublet, the Young Man wears only two colours, the personal ones of Elizabeth I, black and white: black cloak, white ruff, cuffs, legs and shoes, black and white doublet and trunk hose. Black and white was worn, for instance, by Elizabeth’s Champions in the tiltyard and by dancers in court masques. At Sandwich in 1573 the whole town had been hung with black and white in her honour, and she was met by two hundred men attired in white doublets, black trunk hose and white garters - in other words, dressed like our Young Man in tribute to the Queen. White is the colour of virginity, black of constancy. Both were attributes of the Queen.”

Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry

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In an exploration of court pageantry we can catch above all the attitudes of the Queen herself. These annual state festivals were essentially hers, and they reflect directly what she demanded and liked. They epitomize the image of the Elizabethan monarchy as her tortuous mind conceived it, complex and full of paradoxes and contradictions. This calculated ambiguity is brilliantly expressed in the multitude of names under which she was celebrated. God’s anointed, the guardian of the Gospel, the virtues personified, the biblical ruler returned, she is yet the sovereign of her knights, who not only show their fealty and devotion in the medieval sense but go on to find in her the heroine of their life’s romance. Elizabethan England was a divided society of Catholic, Protestant and Puritan, of new aristocracy and old, of rising and declining gentry, of burgeoning urban classes and depressed peasantry. And yet this isolated kingdom situated on the fringes of Europe was virtually alone in late sixteenth-century Europe in averting the disasters of civil war. A society is held together by the assumptions and images it caries in relation to the nature of power within its hierarchy. The Elizabethan monarchy, by dodging and leaving unanswered many crucial issues, by exploiting – and being fortunate enough to be blessed with – a remarkable woman, was able to cut across this fundamental divisiveness and find in the Crown an ambiguous symbol which held the hearts and minds of all its people.

The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry by Roy Strong

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Queen Elizabeth I 1533-1603 being carried in Procession Eliza Triumphans c.1601 Source

“The flower-spangled canopy is mounted on a framework of wooden or – which is less likely – metal rods. It is constructed so that the horizontal support extends on each side beyond the confines of the vertical ones, thus enabling it to be carried by four canopy-bearers. There is simply no room for three each side, and the man in green immediately behind Worcester is surely the fourth canopy supporter brought round from the furthest hidden corner to the front. The canopy then is only a canopy, not a litter. There are no crossbars, no bars descending vertically so that when it was set down the canopy would still rise above Her Majesty. In other words, we are looking at two quite distinct structures, a canopy and something else on which the Queen rides. This brings us to some of the most puzzling members of the royal entourage, the so-called Yeomen of the Guard immediately behind the chair. (..)

These three old men must surely be not Yeomen of the Guard but “grooms of our coaches or litters”. One of them, the man immediately behind the Queen, is extending his arms downwards in a position which can only mean he is pushing something. This surely is precisely what he is doing – Elizabeth is being pushed along from behind on some sort of triumphal car with chair of state upon it. And if one peers into the dark shadows between the legs of Worcester and the canopy-bearers, evidence of wheels and their hubs can be discerned. In other words, what we are looking at is an Elizabethan version of an à l'antique triumph.”

The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry by Roy Strong