The Art At Spy Central
The Art Newspaper has revealed what art hangs in the Secret Intelligence Service’s Post-Modernist headquarters in London. Few UK buildings have tighter security and the only one of its 2,000 employees who can be named is its director—but now at least we know which paintings grace its walls. Spies are trained to notice everything, so hopefully the nameless intelligence operatives are more appreciative of their art than the usual Whitehall civil servants. James Bond certainly possessed this skill. In Dr No, the first Bond film, he discovered the National Gallery’s stolen Portrait of the Duke of Wellington (1812-14) by Goya hanging in the villain’s lair.
