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Julia Trevelyan Oman

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Cause of death
  
Pancreatic cancer

Spouse
  
Roy Strong (m. 1971–2003)

Role
  
Theatre designer

Name
  
Julia Oman

Title
  
Lady Strong


Julia Trevelyan Oman farm4staticflickrcom367912499462463b0ca7c21a4jpg

Born
  
11 July 1930 (
1930-07-11
)
Kensington, London, England

Occupation
  
Set designer in television, theatre, ballet & opera

Died
  
October 10, 2003, Herefordshire, United Kingdom

Parents
  
Charles Chichele Oman, Joan Trevelyan

Awards
  
British Academy Television Award for Best Design

Nominations
  
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design

Julia Trevelyan Oman CBE, (1930–2003; formally Lady Strong) was an English television, theatre, ballet and opera set designer.

Trevelyan Oman was born on 11 July 1930 in Kensington, London, England. Her father was Charles Chichele Oman, Keeper of Metalwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum (his father was the military historian and MP Sir Charles Oman), her mother the historian Joan Trevelyan, daughter of Sir Ernest John Trevelyan. She was educated at Wimbledon College of Art and then at the Royal College of Art.

Among the BBC television programmes she worked on were Dixon of Dock Green and the Billy Cotton Band Show. In 1966, she won the designer of the year award for her contribution to Jonathan Miller's television production of Alice in Wonderland. In 1968 she won the Plays and Players “Best Set” award for Brief Lives, directed by Patrick Garland, with whom she worked on several occasions. She later designed sets for the Chichester Festival, Hamburg State Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, the National Theatre, the Royal Opera House, and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

She married the art historian Roy Strong on 10 September 1971, at Wilmcote church, near Stratford-upon-Avon, with a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury. She was 41 and her husband 35. They lived at Much Birch, Herefordshire, where they made one of Britain's largest post-war formal gardens, The Laskett. In 1995 they 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. She and Strong also wrote books together.

She appeared as a "castaway" on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 18 December 1971, and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1986.

She died at Much Birch, on 10 October 2003, of pancreatic cancer.

A number of her paintings, including a self-portrait, are in the University of Bristol's Theatre Collection.

References

Julia Trevelyan Oman Wikipedia