Types and Shadows: The Roy Strong Diaries 2004-2015

“A funny, touching and charming book – as much a portrait of a marriage as a garden – full of delightful pen portraits of people and places” THE TIMES

Signed copies are available in The Laskett giftshop.

At Home in the English Countryside.

Signed copies are available in The Laskett giftshop.

The distinguished photographer John Swannell and Roy Strong have devised a series of thirty portraits that transport Roy through time, inventing and reinventing him as an array of historical characters.

Beautifully presented, the text is accompanied by quotations from Shakespeare’s works and lush illustrations of his gardens, past and present, plucked from a multitude of sources including embroidered Elizabethan clothing and Victorian gardening books, as well as various gardens around the world.

Roy Strong has written an exemplary introduction to the history of Britain, as first designated by the Romans. It is a brilliant and balanced account of successive ages bound together by a compelling narrative which answers the questions: ‘Where do we come from?’ and ‘Where are we going?’

The garden at The Laskett in Herefordshire is always described as the largest formal garden laid out in Britain since the war and one of most important and most interesting gardens of the second half of the twentieth century.

Roy Strong is best known as the flamboyant former director of two great cultural institutions – the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Scenes and Apparitions begins where its predecessor, Splendours and Miseries, left off. It covers a period of Roy Strong’s life from 1988 to 2003.

Roy Strong was in a state of deep grief following the death of his wife. The following years demonstrate his determination, as well as extraordinary energy and creativity. An informative and entertaining record of a uniquely full and colourful life.

Available from our online giftshop