We asked friends of The Spectator which picture they’d choose to own. Here is Mervyn King's response:
In the centre of our drawing-room, I would install the ‘Wilton Diptych’. From the Middle Ages, it shows Richard II being presented to the Virgin and Child. We do not know who painted it, or why, and the mystery is reinforced by Dillian Gordon’s discovery that the orb on the English banner contains a tiny image of a green island set in a silver sea. Shakespeare’s Richard II portrays England as ‘this precious stone set in the silver sea’. Would I own a painting Shakespeare saw?
To read what pictures Anthony Seldon, Prue Leith and Wendy Cope chose, click here