Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

The art of politics: what ministers hang on their walls

David Bailey’s portrait of the Queen (2014). Credit: David Bailey/ Crown copyright, UK 
issue 19 June 2021

On the walls of the Chancellor’s office hangs a print of Eric Ravilious’s lithograph ‘Working Controls while Submerged’ (1941). Two engineers in blue overalls heave the levers of a submarine. A third slumps asleep on a bench. An image, perhaps, of the ship of state, several hundred feet underwater, but by no means sunk yet.

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