Roy Strong, THE ELIZABETHAN IMAGE. An introduction to English portraiture, 1558–1603, 224pp. Yale University Press. £35 (US $50)

In June 1968, Roy Strong – shortly after his sensational appointment, at the age of thirty-one, as Director of the National Portrait Gallery – reviewed a “Jackdaw” on Elizabeth I for the Spectator. Jackdaws were a series of publications for children on historical and other non-fiction topics, in the appealing form of a cardboard wallet full of loose-leaf facsimile documents, pictures, and suggestions for activities. Recalling that he was a sixteen-year-old schoolboy when he began his first card-index of portraits of the Virgin Queen, Strong declared, “How thrilled I should have been at that age and earlier to have had the Jackdaw Elizabeth I pressed into my hands”. I was that fortunate child. The beloved Jackdaw still sits with my collection of books on Elizabeth. Together with family days out at magical Elizabethan houses like Little Moreton Hall, Glenda Jackson’s captivating performance in Elizabeth R, and visits to…