Of the other usual suspects, Sir Christopher Ondaatje, the millionaire financier and Labour Party donor, is seen as unlikely, as he is on the board of the National Portrait Gallery, which is trying to raise £1.8m to save another painting of Omai, by the Welsh artist William Parry. There are similar doubts about Lord Thomson of Fleet, as his acquisitions tend to benefit his favourite gallery in Ontario.Sir Paul is also believed to have had a very personal motive for securing the portrait: to stop it falling into the hands of the Getty Museum, the vast Los Angeles archive established by his father, John Paul Getty I. In his will, the late US oil baron forbade his son from ever becoming a trustee of the museum, a factor some have used to explain Sir Paul’s mammoth donations to rival UK institutions like the National Gallery, to which he gave a £50m endowment in 1985. Art world insiders insist that the most recent donation bears Sir Paul’s stamp One well-placed source said: “I am convinced it was him. It would be like a last great joke at the expense of the Getty Museum.”His long-time friend, Sir John Mortimer, added: “It would be quite typical of him, and I hope he did. It’s a beautiful picture.” The writer gave as an example of the billionaire’s generosity his £1m donation in 1994 to the National Galleries of Scotland’s appeal to save Canova’s Three Graces.Sir Paul also continued to support less fashionable causes, including The Oldie, to which he gave nearly £1m in his final year.

Last week The Literary Review revealed he had also given generously to the magazine, but it kept the donation quiet until after his death.For the past two decades, he even paid the running costs of the Vintage Wireless Museum in Dulwich, after being impressed by its service when he popped in to have a rare HMV Lumiere gramophone repaired. The museum’s owner, Gerald Wells, 73, said of his benefactor: “He became a very good personal friend.”The wireless is not the only all-but-obsolete invention Sir Paul was willing to buoy up. Having bailed it out to the tune of £5m after the 2001 election, weeks before he died he was in talks to donate a further hefty sum to the Conservatives.. Nelson Mandela is backing a campaign to set up Britain’s first City Academy to be sponsored by parents.

To make matters worse, most of the neighbouring secondary schools are oversubscribed.Many of the parents who are supporting the campaign now have children at the award-winning Sudbourne primary school – selected by the Prime Minister for his first school visit on being elected in 1997 because of its outstanding national curriculum test results.. The issue of homosexuality is the latest arena for the struggle for the Church of England’s soul, the battleground between the liberal and evangelical wings of the Anglican communion. The row, particularly over the ordination of gay priests, may not be something that bothers the average church worshipper, but for the evangelical wing it is a handy stick with which to beat the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has enraged them with his acknowledgement that in Wales he knowingly ordained a priest involved in a gay relationship. Now the row is set to escalate with the controversy over the appointment of the Bishop of Reading, a known proponent of gay rights. Calls have been made for Canon Jeffrey John to quit the post because of his stance and the fact that he has been in a long-term gay relationship, although he says he now follows a life of sexual abstinence. Certainly to the outside world it appears to be an exclusive rather than inclusive institution, with the evangelicals insisting that homosexuality is an abomination and that its practitioners should be denounced. This approach seems to have little to do with the teaching of Christ, his commitment to fellowship and concern for the outsider.

What it does do is signal that certain factions within the church have an overriding concern with sexuality. But as the Catholic Church learnt to its cost in its teaching on contraception, people do not like ecclesiastical interference in the bedroom.For years the Church of England has fudged the issue of homosexuality. Its 1991 statement, Issues in Human Sexuality, was an uneasy compromise, preaching tolerance for the clergy in gay relationships but also abstinence. So far the Archbishop of Canterbury has trod an uneasy path between the two factions in his church.