I am so sorry to hear news of the death of Antonia Byatt, who I admired greatly.

When I went to the V&A, my job was attached to its Education Department. In the summer of 1983, I was asked to arrange a series of lectures in connection with Roy Strong’s exhibition, ‘Artists of the Tudor Court’.   They were on a Sunday afternoon and I was told that no-one would come to lectures on a Sunday in August because they would all be in the country.   I asked Antonia Byatt.  

She was on the first list I drew up for the Board of Trustees at the National Portrait Gallery as to who might have their portrait painted. She wanted to be painted by Patrick Heron because of the portrait he had done in 1949 of T.S. Eliot. He hadn’t done a portrait since, apart from an oil sketch of Jo Grimond for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 1985, and, after his death, it transpired that he had done hundreds of drawings of her, trying to catch her image. She wanted me to accompany her to St. Ives, so we stayed there for the best part of a week, eating sandwiches every day on the beach. I took a photograph of them in Patrick’s studio which I reproduce in her memory (© National Portrait Gallery, London). She was a wonderful person as well as a magnificent writer:-