People : Violet Trefusis . Vita’s True Love .

Violet Trefusis (née Keppel; 6 June 1894 – 29 February 1972) was an English writer and socialite. She is chiefly remembered for her lengthy affair with the poet Vita Sackville-West, which the two women continued after their respective marriages to men. Trefusis wrote novels and non-fiction works, both in English and French.

The affair was featured in novels by both parties, in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography, and in many letters and memoirs of the period, roughly 1912–1922. Many are preserved at Yale University Library. Trefusis also inspired other fiction and was featured as a pivotal character in these novels, including “Lady Montdore” in Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and “Muriel” in Harold Acton’s The Soul’s Gymnasium.

Early life

Born Violet Keppel, she was the daughter of Alice Keppel, later a mistress of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, and her husband, The Hon. George Keppel, a son of the 7th Earl of Albemarle. But members of the Keppel family thought her biological father was William Beckett, subsequently 2nd Baron Grimthorpe, a banker and MP for Whitby.

Violet lived her early youth in London, where the Keppel family had a house in Portman Square. When she was four years old, her mother Alice Keppel became the favourite mistress of Albert Edward (Bertie), the Prince of Wales, who was crowned as King Edward VII on 22 January 1901. He paid visits to the Keppel household in the afternoon around tea-time, on a regular basis until the end of his life in 1910. (George Keppel, who was aware of the affair, was conveniently absent at these times.)

In 1900 Violet’s only sibling, Sonia, was born. (Sonia is the grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Violet was her great-aunt.)

Affair with Vita Sackville-West

Trefusis is best remembered today for her love affair with the wealthy Vita Sackville-West. Virginia Woolf described this by analogy in her novel Orlando. In this romanticized biography of Vita, Trefusis is represented by the Russian princess Sasha.

The two women both wrote fictional accounts that referred to this love affair (Challenge by Sackville-West and Broderie Anglaise a roman à clef in French by Trefusis). Sackville-West’s son Nigel Nicolson the non-fiction Portrait of a Marriage, based on material from his mother’s letters, and adding extensive “clarifications,” including some of his father’s point of view. Such works explored other aspects of the affair. Trefusis was also featured as a pivotal fictional character in other novels, including as “Lady Montdore” in Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate and “Muriel” in Harold Acton’s The Soul’s Gymnasium.

Each of the participants left extensive written accounts in surviving letters and diaries. Apart from the two central players, Alice Keppel, Victoria Sackville-West, Harold Nicolson, Denys Trefusis and Pat Dansey also left documents that referred to the affair.

Diana Souhami’s Mrs Keppel and her Daughter (1997) provides an overview of the affair and of the main actors in the drama. When Violet was 10, she met Vita (who was two years older) for the first time. After that, they attended the same school for several years and soon recognised a bond between them. When Violet was 14, she confessed her love to Vita and gave her a ring. In 1910, after the death of Edward VII, Mrs Keppel made her family observe a “discretion” leave of about two years before re-establishing themselves in British society. When they returned to London, the Keppels moved to a house in Grosvenor Street. At that time, Violet learned that Vita was soon to be engaged to Harold Nicolson and was involved in an affair with Rosamund Grosvenor. Violet made it clear that she still loved Vita, but became engaged to make Vita jealous. This did not stop Vita from marrying Harold (in October 1913), nor did he curtail his own homosexual adventures after marriage.

In April 1918, Violet and Vita refreshed and intensified their bond. Vita had two sons by then, but she left them in the care of others while she and Violet took a holiday in Cornwall. Meanwhile Mrs Keppel was busy arranging a marriage for Violet with Denys Robert Trefusis (1890–1929), son of Colonel Hon. John Schomberg Trefusis and Eva Louisa Bontein. A few days after the armistice, Violet and Vita went to France for several months. Because of Vita’s exclusive claim, and her own loathing of marriage, Violet made Denys promise never to have sex with her as a condition for marriage. He apparently agreed as, on 16 June 1919, they married. At the end of that year, Violet and Vita made a new two-month excursion to France: ordered to do so by his mother-in-law, Denys retrieved Violet from the south of France when new gossip about her and Sackville-West’s loose behaviour began to reach London. The next time they left, in February 1920, was to be the final elopement. Sackville-West might still have had some doubts and probably hoped that Harold would interfere. Harold and Denys pursued the women, flying to France inn a two-seater airplane. The couples had heated scenes in Amiens.

The climax came when Harold told Vita that Violet had been unfaithful to her (with Denys). Violet tried to explain and assured Vita of her innocence (which was in all likelihood true). Vita was much too angry and upset to listen, and fled saying she couldn’t bear to see Violet for at least two months. Six weeks later Vita returned to France to meet Violet. Mrs Keppel desperately tried to keep the scandal away from London, where Violet’s sister, Sonia, was about to be married (to Roland Cubitt). Violet spent much of 1920 abroad, clinging desperately to Vita via continuous letters. In January 1921, Vita and Violet made a final journey to France, where they spent six weeks together. At this time, Harold threatened to break off the marriage if Vita continued her escapades. When Vita returned to England in March, it was practically the end of the affair. Violet was sent to Italy; and, from there she wrote her last desperate letters to their mutual friend Pat Dansey, having been forbidden from writing directly to Vita. At the end of the year, Violet had to face the facts and start to build her life from scratch.

The two former lovers met again in 1940, after the progress of World War II forced Trefusis to return to England. The women continued to keep in touch and send each other affectionate letters.

Career

During the Second World War in London, Trefusis participated in the broadcasting of “La France Libre”, which earned her a Legion d’Honneur after the war; she was also made a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Trefusis received mixed reviews on her books. Some critics credited Trefusis with an “excellent gift of observation” and a “talent for mimicry and flair for decor in most of her books.” These qualities were evident in her novels written in English and in French. Other critics stated that her books were not great literature, although they sold well and her readers enjoyed them.

She made many appearances as a pivotal character in other writers’ fiction. Nancy Mitford based “Lady Montdore”, a character in her novel Love in a Cold Climate, on Trefusis. She featured in Cyril Connolly’s The Rock Pool, in Harold Acton’s The Soul’s Gymnasium as “Muriel”, in several novels by Vita Sackville-West, and in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography as the ravishing “Princess Sasha”.

Although her writings spanned much of the twentieth century, many were unpublished. Virago, a publishing house devoted to recovering the forgotten work of women writers, set about putting matters right. They brought out two of her novels with introductions by Lorna Sage and Lisa St Aubin de Teran, but were eventually defeated by copyright difficulties. In addition, Lorna Sage, Trefusis’ great champion among British critics, died before she could assist in the publication of further works by Trefusis, as she planned.

Later life in France

From 1923 on, Trefusis was one of the many lovers of the Singer sewing machine heiress Winnaretta Singer, daughter of Isaac Singer and wife of the homosexual Prince Edmond de Polignac, who introduced her to the artistic beau-monde in Paris. Trefusis conceded more and more to her mother’s model of being “socially acceptable” but, at the same time, not wavering in her sexuality. Singer, like Sackville-West before her, dominated the relationship, though apparently to mutual satisfaction. The two were together for many years and seem to have been content. Trefusis’s mother, Alice Keppel, did not object to this affair, most likely because of Singer’s wealth and power, and the fact that Singer carried on the affair in a much more disciplined way. Trefusis seemed to prefer the role of the submissive and therefore fitted well with Singer, who, whip in hand, was typically dominant and in control in her relationships. Neither was completely faithful during their long affair, but, unlike Trefusis’s affair with Sackville-West, this seems to have had no negative effect on their understanding.

In 1924, Mrs Keppel bought L’Ombrellino, a large villa overlooking Florence, where Galileo Galilei had once lived. After her parents’ death in 1947, Trefusis would become the chatelaine of L’Ombrellino till the end of her life. In 1929, Denys Trefusis died, completely estranged from his seemingly unfeeling wife. After his death,Trefusis published several novels, some in English, some in French, that she had written in her medieval “Tour” in Saint-Loup-de-Naud, Seine-et-Marne, France – a gift from Winnaretta.

Joseph Alsop, an American journalist, recounts in his autobiography a meeting with Violet in Florence. “Mrs. Trefusis’s enthusiasms had long since inspired the rhyme ‘Mrs Trefusis never refuses.’ Governor Olson, as it turned out was not refused . . . they were much cheered up by one another.”

Nancy Mitford said that Trefusis’s autobiography should be titled Here Lies Violet Trefusis, and partly based the character of Lady Montdore in Love in a Cold Climate on her.

François Mitterrand, who later became President of the French Republic in 1981, in his chronicle La Paille & le Grain, mentions his friendship with Violet Trefusis under 2 March 1972, when he received “the telegram” informing of her death. He goes on to discuss how, before Christmas 1971, he went to Florence to visit her as he knew she was in her last months of life: he had dinner with Violet Trefusis and Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, who was a member of the British Government at the beginning of the Second World War, at her house in Florence.

Death and legacy

Trefusis died at L’Ombrellino on the Bellosguardo on 29 February 1972. She died of starvation, the effect of a malabsorption disease. Her ashes were placed both in Florence at the Cimitero degli Allori (The Evangelical Cemetery of Laurels) and in Saint-Loup-de-Naud in the monks’ refectory near her tower.

In the 1990 BBC Mini-series Portrait of a Marriage, Violet Trefusis is portrayed by Cathryn Harrison.

Writings

Novels

• Sortie de secours (1929)
• Écho (1931)
• Tandem (1933)
• Broderie Anglaise (1939–1945)
• Hunt the Slipper
• Pirates at play
• Les causes perdues (1940)

Memoirs

• Prelude to Misadventure (1941)
• Don’t look Round (1952)

Last works

• Memoirs of an armchair (1960)
• From Dusk to Dawn (last work, 1972)

Unpublished / other

• The Hook in the Heart (n.d.)
• Instants de mémoire (Gestes)
• La chèvre et le chou (n.d.)
• The Shortcut
• Les sœurs ennemies (c. 1940s?)
• The End Justifies the Means (c. 1947)
• All Glorious Within (n.d.)
• Alas, A Lady! (n.d.)
• Father and Daughter. The Seducer
• Irène et Pénélope
• The Sleeper (n.d.)
• A Tooth for a Tooth(n.d.)

People : Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey……. Top To His Friends

Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey Bt, (16 June 1875 – 14 March 1905), styled Lord Paget until 1880 and Earl of Uxbridge between 1880 and 1898, and nicknamed “Toppy”, was a British Peer who was notable during his short life for squandering his inheritance on a lavish social life and accumulating massive debts. Regarded as the “black sheep” of the family, he was dubbed “the dancing marquess” for his habit of performing “sinuous, sexy, snake-like dances”.

The Complete Peerage says that he “seems only to have existed for the purpose of giving a melancholy and unneeded illustration of the truth that a man with the finest prospects, may, by the wildest folly and extravagance, as Sir Thomas Browne says, ‘foully miscarry in the advantage of humanity, play away an uniterable life, and have lived in vain.’

Family background
Paget was the eldest son of the 4th Marquess by his father’s second wife, Blanche Mary Boyd. However, rumours persisted that his biological father was the French actor Benoît-Constant Coquelin, a rumour that gained some currency when, according to some sources, after the death of his mother in 1877, when he was two years old, Paget reportedly was raised by Coquelin’s sister-in-law in Paris until he was eight. That story seems to have been a confusion of facts. The sister-in-law, née Edith Marion Boyd, was the fourth marquess’s aunt, one of his mother’s sisters, and she did not wed Coquelin’s brother Gustave until 1891. His stepmother from 1880 was an American, Mary “Minna” Livingston King, the widow of the Hon. Henry Wodehouse.

He attended Eton College, later receiving private tuition, and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. On 20 January 1898 he married his cousin Lilian Florence Maud Chetwynd (1876—1962). Upon the death of his father on 13 October 1898, he inherited his title and the family estates with about 30,000 acres (120 km²) in Staffordshire, Dorset, Anglesey and Derbyshire, providing an annual income of £110,000 (equivalent to £11 million per year in 2014).

Lifestyle
Paget swiftly acquired a reputation for a lavish and spendthrift manner of living. He used his money to buy jewellery and furs, and to throw extravagant parties and flamboyant theatrical performances. He converted the chapel at the family’s country seat of Plas Newydd, Anglesey, into a 150-seat theatre, named the Gaiety Theatre. Here he took the lead role, opulently costumed, in productions ranging from pantomime and comedy to performances of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and Shakespeare’s Henry V. For three years he took his company on tour around Britain and Europe. His wife disapproved of his lifestyle and obtained a decree nisi of divorce on 7 November 1900; it was later annulled due to nonconsummation, according to Lady Anglesey’s grandson by her second marriage, the historian Christopher Simon Sykes. The breakdown of his marriage effectively gave Paget more freedom to enjoy his self-indulgent lifestyle. By this stage he had already begun to mortgage his estates to raise money.

Theft
On 10 September 1901, Paget’s French valet Julian Gault took the opportunity of his employer’s absence at the theatre to steal jewellery to the value of £50,000. At the time, Paget was living in the Walsingham House Hotel in London. Gault, who was later arrested at Dover, testified in court that he had been instructed to steal the jewels by a French woman of his acquaintance called Mathilde (who had taken the jewels to France and was never found). Although Gault’s testimony was believed to be true, he pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey on 22 October and was sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Sexuality
Paget’s outrageous and flamboyant lifestyle, his taste for cross-dressing, and the breakdown of his marriage, have led many to assume that he was gay. Writing in 1970, the homosexual reformer H. Montgomery Hyde characterised him as “the most notorious aristocratic homosexual at this period”. There is no evidence for or against his having had any lovers of either sex – performance historian Viv Gardner believes that he was “a classic narcissist: the only person he could love and make love to was himself, because, for whatever reason, he was ‘unlovable'”. The deliberate destruction by his family of those of his papers that might have settled this matter has left any assessment speculative. The only certainty is that he did not have sexual relations with his wife who initially left him after just six weeks – “The closest the marriage ever came to consummation was that he would make her pose naked covered top to bottom in jewels and she had to sleep wearing the jewels..”

Financial trouble and death
By 1904, despite his inheritance and income, Paget had accumulated debts of £544,000 (£50 million in 2014)[3] and on 11 June was declared bankrupt. His lavish wardrobe, particularly his dressing gowns from Charvet, and jewels were sold to pay creditors, the jewels alone realising £80,000.

In 1905, Paget died in Monte Carlo following a long illness, with his ex-wife by his side, and his remains were returned to St Edwen’s Church, Llanedwen, for burial. The Times reported that despite all that was known of him, he remained much liked by the people of Bangor, who were sorry to hear of his death. Lilian, Marchioness of Anglesey, married, in 1909, John Francis Grey Gilliat, a banker, by whom she had three children.

The title passed to his cousin Charles Henry Alexander Paget, who destroyed all the papers of the 5th Marquess and converted the Gaiety Theatre back into a chapel. It was at least in part owing to the debts left by the 5th Marquess that the family’s principal English estate at Beaudesert, Staffordshire, had to be broken up and sold in the 1930s.

Hidden London : The Honourable Society Of The Middle Temple ….

The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known simply as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers, the others being the Inner Temple, Gray’s Inn and Lincoln’s Inn. It is located in the wider Temple area of London, near the Royal Courts of Justice, and within the City of London.

History

In the 13th century, the Inns of Court originated as hostels and schools for student lawyers. The Middle Temple is the western part of “The Temple”, the headquarters of the Knights Templar until they were dissolved in 1312; the Temple Church still stands as a “peculiar” (extra-diocesan) church of the Inner and Middle Temples.

The Inns stopped being responsible for legal education in 1852, although they continue to provide training in areas such as advocacy and ethics for students, pupil barristers and newly qualified barristers. Most of the Inn is occupied by barristers’ offices, known as chambers. One of the Middle Temple’s main functions now is to provide education and support for new members to the profession. This is done through advocacy training, the provision of scholarships (over £1 million in 2011), subsidised accommodation both in the Temple and in Clapham, and by providing events where junior members may meet senior colleagues for help and advice.

The Inn

Middle Temple Hall is at the heart of the Inn, and the Inn’s student members are required to attend a minimum of 12 qualifying sessions there. Qualifying sessions, formerly known as “dinners”, combine collegiate and educational elements and will usually combine a dinner or reception with lectures, debates, mooting, or musical performances.

Middle Temple Hall is also a popular venue for banqueting, weddings, receptions and parties. In recent years, it has become a much-used film location—the cobbled streets, historic buildings and gas lighting give it a unique atmosphere. William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night received its first recorded performance here, at the feast Candlemas in 1602.

Middle Temple Library possesses Emery Molyneux’s terrestrial and celestial globes, which are of particular historical cartographical value.

Liberty

Middle Temple (and the neighbouring Inner Temple) is also one of the few remaining liberties, an old name for a geographic division. It is an independent extra-parochial area, historically not governed by the City of London Corporation (and is today regarded as a local council for most purposes) and equally outside the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. The Middle Temple’s functions as a local council are set out in the Temples Order 1971.

It geographically falls within the boundaries and liberties of the City, but can be thought of as an independent enclave.

Some of the Inn’s buildings (those along Essex Street, Devereux Court and the Queen Elizabeth Building near the Embankment) lie just outside the liberty of the Middle Temple and the City’s boundary, and are actually situated in the City of Westminster. Quadrant House (7–15 Fleet Street) was acquired by the Middle Temple in 1999 and after five years of conversion is now a barristers’ chambers. This lies outside the liberty (though immediately adjacent to it) but is within the City of London.

Hidden London : The Queens Gallery

The Queen’s Gallery is a public art gallery at Buckingham Palace, home of the British monarch, in London. It exhibits works of art from the Royal Collection (i.e., those works owned by the King or Queen “in trust for the nation” rather than privately) on a rotating basis; about 450 works are on display at any one time.

The gallery is at the west front of the Palace, on the site of a chapel bombed during the Second World War, and first opened in 1962. Over the following 37 years it received 5 million visitors, until closed 1999-2002 for extension work carried out by John Simpson. On May 21 2002 the gallery was reopened by Elizabeth II to coincide with her Golden Jubilee. The extension added the current Doric entrance portico and several new rooms, more than tripling the size of the building. It is open to the public for much of the year

People : Julian Fellowes, The Real Lord Of Downton Abbey….

Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford DL (born 17 August 1949), known professionally as Julian Fellowes, is an English actor, novelist, film director and screenwriter, as well as a Conservative member of the House of Lords.

Early life and education

Fellowes was born in Cairo, Egypt, the youngest son of Peregrine Edward Launcelot Fellowes and Olwen née Stuart-Jones. His father was a diplomat and Arabist who campaigned to have Haile Selassie restored to his throne during World War II. He has three older brothers: Nicholas, wordsmith David, and playwright Rory.

His childhood home was in Wetherby Place, South Kensington,and afterwards at Chiddingly in East Sussex, where he lived from August 1959 until November 1988 and where his parents are buried. The house in Chiddingly, which had been owned by a whodunnit writer called Clifford Kitchin was within reach of London where his father, who had been a diplomat, worked for Shell. Fellowes has described his father as one “of that last generation of men who lived in a pat of butter without knowing it. My mother put him on a train on Monday mornings and drove up to London in the afternoon. At the flat she’d be waiting in a snappy little cocktail dress with a delicious dinner and drink. Lovely, really.” A decided influence to arise from this place was the friendship that developed with another family in the village – the Kingsleys. David Kingsley was head of British Lion Films, the company responsible for many Peter Sellers comedies. Sometimes “glamorous figures” would visit the Kingsleys’ house. Fellowes has said that he thinks he “learnt from David Kingsley that you could actually make a living in the film business.”

Fellowes was educated at several private schools in Britain: first at Wetherby School (Wetherby Place, South Kensington, London), then at St. Philip’s, a Roman Catholic pre-preparatory school, also in Wetherby Place – (Fellowes is ‘a cradle Catholic’) – and finally at the Catholic public school Ampleforth College. He read English Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating with the degree of MA, and where he was a member of Footlights. He studied further at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art (London).

Career

Television

Fellowes moved to Los Angeles in 1981 and played a number of small TV roles for the next two years. He believed his breakthrough had come when he was considered to replace Hervé Villechaize as the butler on the TV series Fantasy Island, but the role was given to the much older British actor Christopher Hewett.

After returning to Britain, Fellowes played the part of Kilwillie in the television series Monarch of the Glen. Other notable acting roles included the part of “Claud Seabrook” in the acclaimed 1996 BBC drama serial Our Friends in the North and the “2nd Duke of Richmond” in the BBC drama serial Aristocrats.

In 1991, he played “Neville Marsham” in For the Greater Good, again for the BBC, directed by Danny Boyle. He portrayed George IV as the Prince Regent for the second time (the first was in the 1982 film The Scarlet Pimpernel) in the 1996 adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s novel Sharpe’s Regiment & Major Dunnett in Sharpe’s Rifles. He launched a new series on BBC One in 2004, Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder, which he wrote and introduced onscreen. He was the presenter of Never Mind the Full Stops, a panel-based gameshow broadcast on BBC Four from 2006 to 2007. He created the hugely successful and critically acclaimed period drama Downton Abbey for ITV1 in 2010. He also wrote a new Titanic mini-series that was shown on ITV1 in March/April 2012.

Films

Fellowes wrote the script for Gosford Park, which won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen in 2002. In late 2005, Fellowes made his directorial début with the film Separate Lies, for which he won the award for Best Directorial Début from the National Board of Review. In 2009, Momentum Pictures and Sony Pictures released The Young Victoria, starring Emily Blunt, for which Fellowes wrote the original screenplay. Other screenwriting credits include Vanity Fair, The Tourist and From Time to Time, which he also directed, and which won Best Picture at the Chicago Children’s Film Festival, the Youth Jury Award at the Seattle International Film Festival, Best Picture at the Fiuggi Family Festival in Rome and the Young Jury Award at Cinemagic in Belfast. His greatest commercial success was The Tourist, which grossed US$278 million worldwide, and for which he co-wrote the screenplay with Christopher McQuarrie and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.

Other films Fellowes has appeared in include Full Circle (1977), Priest of Love (1981), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982), Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985), Damage (1992), Shadowlands (1993), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Regeneration (1997) and Place Vendôme (1998). He has continued his acting career while writing; for example, he unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of Master of Lake-town in the 2012-2014 The Hobbit series.

Novels

Fellowes’ novel Snobs was published in 2004. It focused on the social nuances of the upper class and concerned the marriage of an upper middle class girl to a peer. Snobs was a Sunday Times best seller. In 2009 he published the novel, Past Imperfect, also a Sunday Times best seller. It deals with the Débutante Season of 1968, comparing the world then to the world of 2008. He also wrote, under the pseudonym Rebecca Greville, several romantic novels in the 1970s.

Theatre

As an actor, Fellowes appeared in several West End productions, including Samuel Taylor’s A Touch of Spring, Alan Ayckbourn’s Joking Apart and a revival of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter. As a writer, Fellowes penned the script to the West End musical Mary Poppins, produced by Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Disney, which opened on Broadway in December 2006.

Writing credits

List of television, film and theatre credits

Title	Year	Medium	Notes
Gosford Park	2001	Film	Won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
Mary Poppins	2004	Theatre	Adapted from the novels by P. L. Travers and the 1964 film directed by Robert Stevenson; screenplay by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi
Vanity Fair	2004	Film	Screenplay; based upon the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray
Julian Fellowes Investigates	2004	Television	Writer and Creator; Also Actor
Piccadilly Jim	2004	Film	Screenplay based on the novel by P G Wodehouse
Separate Lies	2005	Film	Screenplay; based upon the novel by Nigel Balchin; Also Director
The Young Victoria	2009	Film	Original Screenplay
From Time to Time	2009	Film	Written by Fellowes, based upon the novel by Lucy M. Boston; Also Director
The Tourist	2010	Film	Screenplay polish
Downton Abbey	2010 – 2013(Seasons One to Four)	Television	Creator, Executive Producer &Writer (Co-written episodes four and six of Season One with Shelagh Stephenson and Tina Pepler respectively)
Titanic	2012	Television	Writer of the four-part ITV1 produced miniseries.
Romeo and Juliet	2013	Film	Screenplay; adapted from the play by William Shakespeare
Crooked House	2013	Film	Script; Adaptation of the novel by Agatha Christie
Gypsy	2013	Film	Screenplay and Script; Remake of the classic musical starring Ethel Merman

Parliament

On 13 January 2011, Fellowes was elevated to the Peerage by being created Baron Fellowes of West Stafford, of West Stafford in the County of Dorset, and was introduced in the House of Lords on that same day, where he sits on the Conservative benches.^[14]

Fellowes’ other interests

Fellowes is the Chairman of the RNIB appeal for Talking Books. He is a Vice-President of the Weldmar Hospicecare Trust, Patron of the South West branch of Age UK, Patron of Changing Faces, of Living Paintings, of the Rainbow Trust, and of Breast Cancer Haven, as well as supporting charities concerned with the care of those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and other causes. He recently opened the Dorset office of south-west adoption charity, Families for Children. He also sits on the Arts and Media Honours Committee.

Fellowes is on the Appeal Council for the National Memorial Arboretum and he is also the Patron of Moviola, an initiative to facilitate rural cinema screenings in the West Country.

Controversy

In March 1981, Fellowes wrote to the Times newspaper in indignation at the MP Geoffrey Dickens’s taunting of his fellow Parliamentarians about the identity of a paedophile whose name he was about to reveal. This turned out to be Sir Peter Hayman, whom Fellowes did not know but who had recently been arrested for owning a large amount of paedophile pornography. In the version of the letter that was published in the Times, Fellowes said: “The feeblest student of human nature must surely be aware of how slight the connexion between pornography and practices need be. To flirt with fetishes is hardly rare in the best circles . . . now he has to have his life, public and private, more thoroughly smashed than if he had murdered his kinsman in broad daylight.” Fellowes later maintained that this had not been a defence of Hayman, who was a stranger to him, so much as an attack on Dickens and his disgusting enjoyment of his own power to reveal under Parliamentary Privilege.

Family

On 28 April 1990, Fellowes married Emma Joy Kitchener LVO (born 1963; a Lady-in-Waiting to HRH Princess Michael of Kent), the great-grandniece of Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener. Fellowes has publicly expressed his dissatisfaction that the proposals to change the rules of royal succession were not extended to peerages, which would have allowed his wife to succeed as 4th Countess Kitchener; instead, the title became extinct on her uncle’s death because of the lack of male heirs. On 9 May 2012 The Queen issued a Royal Warrant of Precedence granting The Lady Fellowes of West Stafford the same rank and title as a daughter of an Earl, as if her late father had survived his brother and therefore succeeded to the title.

They have one son, The Hon Peregrine Charles Morant Kitchener-Fellowes (born 1991). The family resides in Dorset and on 15 October 1998 they changed their surname from Fellowes to Kitchener-Fellowes.

Fellowes was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant (DL) of Dorset in 2009. He is also lord of the manor of Tattershall in Lincolnshire^[24] and President of the Society of Dorset Men.

His wife, Lady Fellowes of West Stafford, is story editor for Downton Abbey and works with charities.

He and Robert Fellowes, Baron Fellowes have a common ancestor named William Fellowes, who lived in 1653.

Highclere Castle : The True Home Of Downton Abbey … And A Capability Brown Landscape To Boot

Highclere Castle is a country house in the Jacobethan style, with a park designed by Capability Brown. The 5,000-acre (2,000 ha) estate is in Hampshire, England, United Kingdom, about 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Newbury, Berkshire. It is the country seat of the Earl of Carnarvon, a branch of the Anglo-Welsh Herbert family.

Highclere Castle is the main filming location for the British television period drama Downton Abbey. The Castle and gardens are open to the public during July and August and at times during the rest of the year.

History

Early years

The castle stands on the site of an earlier house, which was built on the foundations of the medieval palace of the Bishops of Winchester, who owned this estate from the 8th century. The original site was recorded in the Domesday Book. Since 1679, the castle has been home to the Earls of Carnarvon.

In 1692, Robert Sawyer, a lawyer and college friend of Samuel Pepys, bequeathed a mansion at Highclere to his only daughter, Margaret, the first wife of the 8th Earl of Pembroke. Their second son, Robert Sawyer Herbert, inherited Highclere, began its picture collection and created the garden temples. His nephew and heir Henry Herbert was created Baron Porchester and later Earl of Carnarvon by George III.

19th century

The house was then a square, classical mansion, but it was remodelled and largely rebuilt for the third Earl following a design by Sir Charles Barry in 1839–1842, after he had finished with the construction of the Houses of Parliament. It is in the Jacobethan style and faced in Bath stone, reflecting the Victorian revival of English architecture of the late 16th century and early 17th century, when Tudor architecture was being challenged by newly arrived Renaissance influences.

During the 19th century there was a huge Renaissance Revival movement, of which Sir Charles Barry was a great exponent—Barry described the style of Highclere as Anglo-Italian. Barry had been inspired to become an architect by the Renaissance architecture of Italy and was very proficient at working in the Renaissance-based style that became known in the 19th century as Italianate architecture. At Highclere, however, he worked in the Jacobethan style, but added to it some of the motifs of the Italianate style. This is particularly noticeable in the towers, which are slimmer and more refined than those of Mentmore Towers, the other great Jacobethan house built in the same era. Barry produced an alternative design in a more purely Italian Renaissance style, which was rejected by Lord Carnarvon. The external walls are decorated with strapwork designs typical of Northern European Renaissance architecture. The Italian Renaissance theme is more evident in the interiors. In the saloon, in an attempt to resemble a medieval English great hall, Barry’s assistant Thomas Allom introduced a Gothic influence evident in the points rather than curves of the arches, and the mock-hammerbeam roof.

Although the exterior of the north, east and south sides were completed before the 3rd Earl died in 1849 and Sir Charles Barry died in 1860, the interior and the west wing (designated as servants’ quarters) were far from complete. The 4th Earl turned to the architect Thomas Allom, who had worked with Barry, to supervise work on the interior of the Castle, which was completed in 1878.

The 1st Earl had his park laid out according to a design by Capability Brown in 1774–1777, relocating the village in the process—the remains of the church of 1689 are at the south-west corner of the castle. The Lebanon Cedars are believed to be descended from seed brought to England from the Lebanon by the 17th-century seed collector Edward Pococke.

20th century

The castle became home to Egyptian artifacts after the 5th Earl, an enthusiastic amateur Egyptologist, sponsored the excavation of nobles’ tombs in Deir el-Bahari (Thebes) in 1907. He later accompanied archaeologist Howard Carter during the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

In 1969, Henry Herbert, 7th Earl of Carnarvon, became racing manager to Elizabeth II. The 7th Earl was “great friends” with the Queen; she was a “frequent visitor until his death in 2001”.

21st century

By 2009, the castle was in dire need of major repair, with only the ground and first floors remaining usable. Water damage had caused stonework to crumble and ceilings to collapse; at least 50 rooms were uninhabitable. The 8th Earl and his family were living in a “modest cottage in the grounds”; he said his ancestors were responsible for the castle’s long term problems.” As of 2009, repairs needed for the entire estate were estimated to cost around £12 million, £1.8 million of which was urgently needed for just the castle. As of late 2012, the Earl and Lady Carnarvon have stated that a dramatic increase in the number of paying visitors has allowed them to begin major repairs both on Highclere’s turrets and its interior. The family attributes this increase in interest to the on-site filming of Downton Abbey. The family now live in Highclere during the winter months, but return to their cottage in the summer, when the castle is open to the public.

Details

There are various follies on the estate. To the east of the house is the Temple of Diana, erected before 1743 with Corinthian columns from Devonshire House in Piccadilly.”Heaven’s Gate” is a folly about 18 m high on Sidown Hill, built in 1749 by Hon. Robert Sawyer Herbert (d. 1769). Other 18th-Century follies that can be found on the grounds of the estate include Jackdaw’s Castle and the Etruscan Temple.

The hybrid holly Ilex x altaclerensis (Highclere holly) was developed here in about 1835 by hybridising the Madeiran Ilex perado (grown in a greenhouse) with the local native Ilex aquifolium.

Use as location

• 1982: It was seen as the home of a wealthy Englishman that Mr. Fortescue visited seeking money in the 1982 film starring Michael Palin, The Missionary. The castle exterior appears about 19 minutes and 30 seconds into the film.
• 1987: Shots from both the interior and exterior were used as the imposing Mistlethwaite Manor in the Hallmark Hall of Fame’s 1987 version of The Secret Garden.
• 1990–1993: Totleigh Towers, in the TV version of Jeeves and Wooster, was represented by Highclere Castle.
• 1991: The exterior appeared as Lord Graves’s house in the film King Ralph.
• 1992: It was portrayed as the home of the 23rd Earl of Leete in Jim Broadbent and Mike Leigh’s 1992 mock biopic A Sense of History.
• 1999: The salon provided a main interior location for Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut.
• 2001: The exterior appeared as the Raichand mansion in the Bollywood blockbuster Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham.
• 2002: The saloon appeared in the film The Four Feathers starring Heath Ledger.
• 2006: John Legend’s 2006 music video for “Heaven Only Knows” features the castle.
• 2010: The Temple of Diana featured in the movie Pride and Prejudice.
• 2010–present: It is the main setting for the British television period drama Downton Abbey, as a result of which The Tatler referred to the area around Highclere as “Downtonia”

People : DDDD Deborah The Dowager Duchess Of Devonshire, Gardener On A Scale Like No Other…

Deborah Vivien Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire DCVO (née Deborah Freeman-Mitford; 31 March 1920 – 24 September 2014), was the youngest and last surviving of the six Mitford sisters who were prominent members of English society in the 1930s and 1940s.

Life

Known to her family as “Debo”, Deborah Mitford was born in Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, England. She married Lord Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, in 1941. When Cavendish’s older brother, William, Marquess of Hartington, was killed in combat in 1944, Cavendish became heir to the dukedom and Marquess of Hartington; in 1950, upon the death of his father, he became the 11th Duke of Devonshire.

The Duchess was the main public face of Chatsworth for many decades. The Duchess wrote several books about Chatsworth, and played a key role in the restoration of the house, the enhancement of the garden and the development of commercial activities such as Chatsworth Farm Shop (which is on a quite different scale from most farm shops as it employs a hundred people); Chatsworth’s other retail and catering operations; and assorted offshoots such as Chatsworth Food, which sells luxury foodstuffs which carry her signature and Chatsworth Design which sells image rights to items and designs from the Chatsworth collections. Recognising the commercial imperatives of running a stately home, she took a very active role and was known to run the ticket office for Chatsworth House herself. She also supervised the development of the Cavendish Hotel at Baslow near Chatsworth and the Devonshire Arms Hotel at Bolton Abbey.

In 1999 the Duchess was appointed a Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (DCVO) by Queen Elizabeth II, for her service to the Royal Collection Trust. Upon the death of her husband in 2004, her son Peregrine Cavendish became the 12th Duke of Devonshire. She became the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire at this time.

She and the duke had seven children, four of whom died shortly after birth:

• Mark Cavendish (born and died 14 November 1941)
• Emma Cavendish (born 26 March 1943, styled Lady Emma Cavendish from 1944), mother of the fashion model Stella Tennant
• Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire (born 27 April 1944)
• An unnamed child (miscarried December 1946; he or she was a twin of Victor Cavendish, born in 1947)
• Lord Victor Cavendish (born and died 22 May 1947)
• Lady Mary Cavendish (born and died 5 April 1953)
• Lady Sophia Louise Sydney Cavendish (born 18 March 1957)

She was also a maternal aunt of Max Mosley, former president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), as well as the grandmother of Stella Tennant, a fashion model.

Death

Her death, at the age of 94, was announced on 24 September 2014. The Duchess was survived by three of her seven children, eight grandchildren and eighteen great-grandchildren.

Selected interviews

She was interviewed on her experience of sitting for a portrait for painter Lucian Freud in the BBC series Imagine in 2004.

In an interview with John Preston of the Daily Telegraph, published in September 2007, she recounted having tea with Adolf Hitler during a visit to Munich in June 1937, when she was visiting Germany with her mother and her sister Unity, the latter being the only one of the three who spoke German and, therefore the one who carried on the entire conversation with Hitler. Shortly before ending the interview, Preston asked her to choose with whom she would have preferred to have tea: American singer Elvis Presley or Hitler. Looking at the interviewer with astonishment, she answered: “Well, Elvis of course! What an extraordinary question.”

In 2010, the BBC journalist Kirsty Wark interviewed the Duchess for Newsnight. In it, the Duchess talked about life in the 1930s and 1940s, Hitler, the Chatsworth estate, and the marginalisation of the upper classes. She was also interviewed on 23 December by Charlie Rose for PBS. She spoke of her memoir and other interesting aspects of her life. On 10 November 2010, she was interviewed as part of “The Artists, Poets, and Writers Lecture Series” sponsored by the Frick Collection, an interview which focused on her memoir and her published correspondence with Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Titles from birth

• The Honourable Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford (1920–1941)
• The Lady Andrew Cavendish (1941–1944)
• Marchioness of Hartington (1944–1950)
• Her Grace The Duchess of Devonshire (1950–2004)
• Her Grace The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire (2004-2014)

Hadlow Tower & Castle : May’s Folly, The Tallest Victorian Folly In England….

Hadlow Castle is a Grade I listed country house and tower in Hadlow, Kent, England.

History

Hadlow Castle replaced the manor house of Hadlow Court Lodge. It was built over a number of years from the late 1780s, commissioned by Walter May in an ornate Gothic style. The architect was J. Dugdale. his son, Walter Barton May inherited the estate in 1823, and another inheritance in 1832 from his wife’s family. He added a 170 feet (52 m) octagonal tower in 1838, the architect was George Ledwell Taylor. A 40 feet (12 m) octagonal lantern was added in 1840 and another smaller tower was added in 1852. This was dismantled in 1905. Walter Barton May died in 1858 and the estate was sold. Subsequent owners were Robert Rodger, JP, High Sheriff of Kent, in 1865. He died in 1882 and the castle was bought by Dr. MacGeagh, a Harley Street specialist in 1891. He would drive in his carriage to Tonbridge and catch the train to London thus being an early commuter. The castle passed to T E Foster MacGeagh and he sold it in 1919 to Henry Thomas Pearson, whose family occupied it until 1946. During the war it was used as a watchtower by the Royal Observer Corps. The unoccupied castle changed hands several times after the Pearsons’ left, and was demolished in 1951, except for the servants’ quarters, several stables and the Coach House, which was saved by the painter Bernard Hailstone. The Tower was already a Listed Building, having been listed on 17th April 1951. Now the entrance gateway and lodges of the Castle still stand – a heavy Gothic presence on the street – as does the Stable Court with two turreted pavilions, which are all in private ownerships, and new homes have been built in the grounds.

Tower

Hadlow Tower, 51°13′21″N 0°20′20″E known locally as May’s Folly, is a Victorian Gothic tower, and one of the largest in Britain. The top 40 feet (12 m) is an octagonal lantern.

The Grade I listed tower was badly damaged in the Great Storm of 1987, and the lantern was removed in 1996. The tower’s condition then worsened rapidly. The cost of repairs was estimated at £4 million. In July 2006, Tonbridge and Malling borough council announced that it would issue a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on the tower in an effort to save it. This CPO was confirmed in March 2008 by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with plans for the council to take possession of the Tower and transfer it to the Vivat Trust in late 2009, so that the necessary repair and restoration work can be undertaken; plans included short-term holiday accommodation, with a separate exhibition centre on part of the ground floor.

In January 2011, it was announced that the tower had been compulsorily purchased by Tonbridge and Malling District Council; the council sold it to the Vivat Trust for £1. Restoration of the tower, including the replacement of the lantern commenced in February 2011, with completion then scheduled for September 2012. The project was funded by grants from English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The latter granted £2,000,000 of the estimated £4,000,000 restoration cost. Now restored, the tower offers holiday accommodation, with public exhibition space on the ground floor. On 24 February 2011, Hadlow Castle was transferred to the Vivat Trust.

The restoration was completed in February 2013, making it the tallest folly in the United Kingdom. In October 2013, the restoration of the tower was recognised when the Vivat Trust and the Save Hadlow Tower Action Group (SHTAG) won a Lloyd-Webber Angel Award. Work was completed on the interior; the exhibition centre in the tower is open on Thursdays from May to October. Visits are organised by SHTAG

Plant Hunters : Sir Ghillean Prance, A Remarkable Man, From Eden to Eden ……..

Sir Ghillean Tolmie Prance  FIBiol FRS FLS FRS (born 13 July 1937) is a prominent British botanist and ecologist who has published extensivelyon the taxonomy of families such as Chrysobalanaceae and Lecythidaceae, but drew particular attention in documenting the pollination ecology of Victoria amazonica. Prance is a former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Early life

Prance was born on 13 July 1937 in Brandeston, Suffolk, England.[1] He was educated at Malvern College and Keble College, Oxford. In 1963 he received a D. Phil. in Forest Botany from the Commonwealth Forestry Institute.

Career

Prance worked from 1963 at The New York Botanical Garden, initially as a research assistant and, on his departure in 1988, as Director of the Institute of Economic Botany and Senior Vice-President for Science. Much of his career at the New York Botanical Garden was spent conducting extensive fieldwork in the Amazon region of Brazil. He was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1988 to 1999.

Current work

Since his retirement he has remained very active, notably involving himself with the Eden Project. Prance, a devout Christian, is currently the chair of A Rocha and was president of Christians in Science 2002–08.

He is actively involved on environmental issues, a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust, and a Vice-President of the Nature in Art Trust.

Honours

Prance was knighted in 1995. He has been a Fellow of the Linnean Society since 1961, a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1993 and was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour in 1999.

In 2000 he was made a Commander of the Order of the Southern Cross by the President of Brazil.

Legacy

Two photographic portraits of Prance are held at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

A biography of Prance was written by Clive Langmead.

The standard author abbreviation Prance is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name

People : Sir Roy Strong, The Only Living Landscape Architect & Garden Designer To Have 17 Portraits In The National Portrait Gallery…..

Sir Roy Colin Strong FRSL (born 23 August 1935) is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has been director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He was knighted in 1983.

Biography

Early years

Roy Colin Strong was born in Winchmore Hill, then in Middlesex, and attended nearby Edmonton County School in Edmonton.

He earned a first class honours degree in history at Queen Mary College, University of London. He then earned his Ph.D from the Warburg Institute, University of London and became a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. His passionate interest in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth I was sidelined “while he wrote a thesis on Elizabethan Court Pageantry supervised by the Renaissance scholar, Dame Frances Yates who (he says) restructured and re-formed my thinking.” In 2007 Strong listed his qualifications as DLitt PhD FSS.

Career

National Portrait Gallery

He became assistant keeper of the National Portrait Gallery in 1959, and was its director 1967-73: Sir Roy came to prominence at age 32 when he became the youngest director of the National Portrait Gallery. He set about transforming its conservative image with a series of extrovert shows, including “600 Cecil Beaton portraits 1928-1968.” Dedicated to the culture of the 1960s and 1970s, Sir Roy went on to amuse audiences at the V&A in 1974 with his collection of fedora hats, kipper ties and maxi coats. By regularly introducing new exhibitions he doubled attendance.

Reflecting on his time as director of the National Portrait Gallery, Sir Roy Strong pinpoints the exhibition “Beaton Portraits 1928-1968” as a turning point in the gallery’s history. Strong chose fashion photographer Cecil Beaton as a catalyst for change says much about the glamour and appeal of the photographer’s work. But even so, it seems unlikely that anyone could have predicted the sheer scale of the exhibition’s success. “The public flocked to the exhibition and its run was extended twice. The queues to get in made national news. The Gallery had arrived”, Strong wrote in the catalogue to Beaton Portraits, the more recent exhibition of Beaton that ran at the gallery until 31 May 2004.

Victoria & Albert Museum

In 1973, aged 38, he became the youngest director of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London. In his tenure, until 1987, he presided over its The Destruction of the Country House (1974, with Marcus Binney and John Harris), Change and Decay: the future of our churches (1977), and The Garden: a Celebration of a Thousand Years of British Gardening (1979), all of which have been credited with boosting their conservationist agendas. 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 was awarded The Royal Photographic Society’s President’s Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2003.

Television

In 2008 Strong hosted a six-part TV reality series The Diets That Time Forgot. He acted as the Director of the fictitious Institute of Physical Culture, where nine volunteers spent 24 days testing three weight loss diets and fitness regimes that were popular in the late Victorian (William Banting) and Edwardian periods (Horace Fletcher) and the ‘roaring’ Twenties (Dr Lulu Hunt Peters). The weekly series was first aired on 18 March on Channel 4.

Writings

In 1999, he published The Spirit of Britain: A Narrative History of the Arts, a widely acclaimed 700-page study of British arts through two millennia. In 2005, he published Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy.

Personal life

Marriage

Roy Strong married Julia Trevelyan Oman in 1971. The arts world was astonished when “Strong abandoned the bachelor life and ‘eloped’ with Julia Trevelyan Oman, marrying her at Wilmcote church, near Stratford-upon-Avon, on 10 September 1971 with a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Julia Trevelyan Oman was 41 and her husband 35…they enjoyed a belated honeymoon in Tuscany.” She died in 2003 of pancreatic cancer.

Herefordshire

Sir Roy lives in the village of Much Birch, which lies 8 miles (13 km) south of Hereford on the A49 trunk road. Here, with his wife, he designed one of Britain’s largest post-war formal gardens, the Laskett. In 1995 he and his wife commissioned the artist Jonathan Myles-Lea to paint a ‘portrait’ of the house and gardens and the painting the Laskett was completed the same year. Sir Roy now works full-time as a writer and broadcaster. He has lived in Herefordshire since 1973-74 and he and his wife conceived the Laskett garden in autumn 1974.

From 22 April 2010 the Laskett Gardens have been open to the public by appointment, for groups of over twenty.

After leaving the V&A, Strong published a set of diaries that became infamous for its often critical assessments of figures in the art and political worlds. It has been rumoured that he has retained a set for posthumous publication. Jan Moir commented in 2002: “His bitchy, hilarious diaries caused a storm when they were published in 1997 and although he has no plans at present to publish another set, he is keeping a private diary again.”

Anglicanism

A practising Anglican, Strong is an altar server at Hereford Cathedral, as well as being high steward of Westminster Abbey. He was previously its high bailiff and Searcher.[11] In this capacity he attended the funeral service of the Queen Mother in 2002. On 30 May 2007, in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, he delivered the annual Gresham College Special Lecture, entitled The Beauty of Holiness and its Perils (or what is to happen to 10,000 parish churches?), which was deeply critical of the status quo. He said: “little case can be made in the twenty-first century for an expensive building to exist for a service once a week or month lasting an hour,” and he recommends someone taking “an axe and hatchet the utterly awful kipper coloured choir stalls and pews, drag them out of the church and burn them,” and “letting in the local community” in order to preserve many rural churches in Britain.

Portraits of Roy Strong

Seventeen portraits of Strong reside in the National Portrait Gallery Collection including both photograph and sketch by Cecil Beaton and an oil painting by Bryan Organ. An early bronze bust by Angela Conner is on view at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. In 2005, Strong sat for Jon Edgar for a work in terracotta which was exhibited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2013 as part of the Sculpture Series Heads – Contributors to British Sculpture.

Honorary positions

Chairman of the Art Department, Arts Council.

• Deputy Chairman, Southbank Centre.
• High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, from 2000.
• President, the Garden History Society, 2000-06.

President, the Friends of Croome Park, from 2008.