She also did a superb job on Bennett’s Getting On Queen’s 1971 designing a 1970s NW1 basement kitchen – piercingly authentic down to

She also did a superb job on Bennett’s Getting On (Queen’s, 1971), designing a 1970s NW1 basement kitchen – piercingly authentic down to the last Asiatic pheasant plate on the stripped pine dresser – to frame an acerbic play fatally compromised by the refusal of its star (Kenneth More) to portray the less charming aspects of his character, a somewhat blinkered Labour politician.A reunion with Jonathan Miller saw one of Oman’s very finest designs when they collaborated on The Merchant of Venice (Old Vic, 1970) for the National Theatre. Again for Garland she designed Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On (Apollo, 1968) – the perfect designer for the play’s public-school-set mixture of revue and elegy – taking greatly to Gielgud (as he did to her) and patiently coping with his mercurial changes of mind (“Wouldn’t it be less distracting to use cardboard cut-outs for the schoolboys? Oh, dear me, no, what a silly idea”). She was inspired in her choices of location, including the use of Sir John Soane’s Museum for the scenes with the Caterpillar (a magnificently bemused Michael Redgrave) in an odd, eerily sinister but elegiac sequence. Stripping away the Tenniel trappings to reveal adult faces and figures beneath in what developed into a fantasy of repression and identity, Oman’s designs evoked all the overstuffed Victoriana of Lewis Carroll’s world within Miller’s focus on Alice as having the context of a dream, an askew, oneiric world with characters only a footstep away from lunacy in some cases. She remained with the Corporation for more than a decade, working on an extraordinary range of productions, from classy and star-laden classic plays to some of the more gritty work slowly finding its way onto the British small screen in the 1960s.By far her most original contribution to the BBC was her work with Jonathan Miller on their mould-breaking version of Alice in Wonderland (1966). The Trevelyans (from whom she was descended on her mother’s side) and the Omans had particularly strong Oxford links; some of the Laskett’s most prized plants – including Oman’s much-loved quince tree – came originally from the garden of Frewin Hall, the Trevelyan house in Oxford where her mother spent her childhood.Julia Trevelyan Oman, a studious child, showed very early artistic talent and she gravitated naturally to the Royal College of Art, emerging – somewhat to her own surprise – in 1955 with its Silver Medal and a contract to work as a staff designer for the BBC. She also wrote some memorable books in partnership with her husband, one of them most appropriately titled On Happiness (1998).Their partnership worked so well, perhaps, to a degree because of their preservation of their respective careers and identities (she was always “Dr Julia Trevelyan Oman” rather than “Lady Strong”, a reminder that her background and ancestry yoked two of England’s most distinguished academic and literary families).

Theatrical design, even if preserved in photographs, working drawings and models, still – like the essence of theatre itself – remains an ephemeral art, like sculpting in snow. But Julia Trevelyan Oman, whose work in theatre, ballet and opera, and on cinema and television screens, established her as a leading designer for over 30 years, also co-created (with her husband, Sir Roy Strong) an enduring legacy in the remarkable gardens of the Laskett, their house in Herefordshire, near Ross-on-Wye. Julia Trevelyan Oman, designer and writer: born London 11 July 1930; designer, BBC Television 1955-67; CBE 1986; married 1971 Roy Strong (Kt 1982); died Much Birch, Herefordshire 10 October 2003. Mr Letwin says he has “nothing against the state sector” and would have sent his children to state schools in Dorset, where his seat is, but wanted them to be in London so he could see them more often.The shadow Home Secretary will shortly publish a paper arguing for volunteers to go into state schools to “help with difficult children”.But the proposal is likely to anger the National Union of Teachers, which has already objected to the increasing use of parents as untrained classroom assistants in schools.. “Wherever you go you will be amongst people who vary from saints to sinners. I was among people at Eton who have ended up in jail,” he said.

But questions on his future are likely to deepen tomorrow when MPs return to Parliament, and the Tories resume plotting.Mr Letwin apologised , yesterday to his local comprehensive in London, the Lillian Baylis school in Kennington, which has a high proportion of ethnic-minority pupils, after it was identified in the press as the nearest comprehensive to the MP’s London home.He said he “did not want to castigate that particular school”. But he risked inflaming the row by saying children going to such schools would have fewer prospects than those at private schools. They “do not have a chance equivalent to that which children in west Dorset schools have or which children in independent schools have”, he said. Mr Letwin said his objection was not the number of children who speak English as a second language in Lambeth schools and said he “couldn’t care less if they are full of immigrants”.He also denied he did not want his children to mix with children from disadvantaged backgrounds but was concerned with “the academic standards and the discipline and orderliness of the school”.He said England’s most exclusive public school produced future criminals when he was there. Mr Letwin’s latest off-beat policy idea, disclosed in an interview with The Independent, was aired as his leader, Iain Duncan Smith, was facing an investigation into his office payments by the House of Commons sleaze watchdog.The Tory leader denied any “wrongdoing” over payments from taxpayers’ funds to his wife, Betsy, for secretarial work.

Oliver Letwin, who declared last week he would rather beg than send his children to a London state school, is considering a plan that would mean children in council care being sent to private boarding schools such as Eton.
The shadow Home Secretary, an old Etonian, has launched a working group on the future of local authority care, which will explore the possibility of handing control of care homes to independent boarding schools and charities.It will examine whether enrolling children in care in the best boarding schools will improve their prospects. Many secondary schools have already jumped the gun over this proposal from the Government and have taken foreign languages off the curriculum.. Students taking the top-level advanced diploma – the equivalent of today’s A-level – should be required to achieve credits in English, maths, information technology and “critical thinking or theory of knowledge”.Even though foreign languages would be required as part of the diploma for six- formers, they would not all necessarily have to study the subject to A-level standard.Even that would be a far cry from the present situation – whereby students will be allowed to drop the subject completely at 14 from next September. They could “evolve” into being part of the new qualification.