Old National Treasure

We are delighted to learn from the National Gallery this morning that a portrait of a boy by Sir Thomas Lawrence is destined to enter our national collections for a knock down price of a little under £10 million.

The child’s portrait represents everything that we need to be calmly contemplating at this moment of national crisis. He is fair-skinned, pampered, uniquely entitled, wholly at his languid ease, and of an almost unparalleled sugariness. Goodness knows how many animals queued with exemplary calmness outside the abattoir to provide him with the clothes that he is wearing.

In short, anther magnificent objet d’art saved for the nation.