My favourite painting is J.M.W. Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire. Whenever I’m in London, I visit Room 34 of the National Gallery and sit in awe before Turner’s master-piece. To me, it’s a secular shrine.

The mighty Temeraire, veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar that saved England from Napoleon, is being towed to the breaker’s yard more than 30 years after her greatest glory. Yet Turner focuses our gaze on a sinister, black, smoke-belching, paddle-wheeled tug, its squat features outlined sharply as the unresisting Temeraire follows behind, a hazy romantic presence brought meekly yet unwillingly to her fate, a magnificent beast led to the final indignity of slaughter.