Roy Strong’s towering egotism is really rather engaging

There is nothing wrong with being self-invented. The most interesting people in the world designed themselves. And in this matter Roy Strong, once upon a time the director of the Victoria & Albert Museum and National Portrait Gallery, can offer a master class. He has discovered the mines of self-invention to be very deep and richly seamed with treasure. This is no less than his third bulky volume of diaries, and readers have been generously treated to autobiographies as well.

While convinced that a scheming Alan Yentob conspired to keep him off the telly for more than 30 years, Roy, with his singular voice, is a national asset, recognisable from innumerable radio broadcasts. With great art he has retained a bit of a suburban twang from Edmonton Grammar School, but presents overall as posh. The ever-so-slightly camp lisp is a nice touch, suggestive of self-deprecation where, I suspect, not a lot of that exists.

A brilliant university career removed him from ‘awful, humiliating’ suburban mediocrity. His father was a disobliging and artless hat salesman. Mum was Mabel. Elizabethan court masques became a special subject. This is a genre of exaggerated histrionics, of dressing up and striking mannered poses. Who says academic research is no preparation for life?

But I don’t want to be a bitch. This diarist is sometimes bitchy with himself. I always admired Strong from afar. With flares, kipper ties, stylised facial hair and fedora he became a swinging director of the NPG at just 32. If anyone can claim to have modernised museums it was Roy. He admirably advised that visitors should be able to enjoy ‘martinis with their Bellinis’. Private Eye’s Pseuds’ Corner once published a photograph of him holding a champagne glass. No quotation: just the picture.