Sir Roy Colin Strong, CH, FRSL, FSA (born 23 August 1935) is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer.

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 ...[his]...

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.

"[9] 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.

Strong is a notable scholar of Renaissance art, especially English Elizabethan portraiture, on which he has written many books and articles (see bibliography section).

[12] On 10 September 1971, Strong married 41-year-old theatrical designer Julia Trevelyan Oman,[13] at Wilmcote church, near Stratford-upon-Avon, with a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

[18] A practising Anglican, Strong is an altar server at Hereford Cathedral, and served as High Bailiff and Searcher of the Sanctuary of Westminster Abbey.

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?

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,"[5] and he wanted to "take 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.

The National Portrait Gallery holds Strong's correspondence with colleagues and acquaintances, mostly of a semi-personal nature concerning his personal commitments and achievements.

[31] The Bodleian Libraries' holdings of Roy Strong papers include manuscripts of his many books on historical, cultural and artistic subjects; personal diaries, correspondence and material relating to the Laskett garden.

[32] The Paul Mellon Centre holds the research material compiled by Strong in the process of writing his publications on Tudor and Stuart art.