Sir Roy Strong: Cockneys and toffs alike treated me with contempt

Former director of the V&A Sir Roy Strong told yesterday’s Oldie lunch at Simpson’s how menswear shops in the Sixties used to measure your inside leg even when you were buying a tie. He also recalled how cockneys and toffs alike treated him, as a meritocrat from the north London suburbs, with contempt when he became director of the National Portrait Gallery at the age of 31. “Harold Nicolson said: ‘We should never have appointed you,’ and turned his back,” said Sir Roy.

“Robert Elms said: ‘You changed your voice, didn’t you?’ Of course I did. You had to in the Fifties. The Fifties were like the 1650s. It takes a lot to sink me, I can tell you. I am still here.”