This photograph, taken about ten years ago, captures me in the process of realising two ambitions. The first was to do some life-drawing in the hallowed portals of the Royal Academy. The second was to meet a criminal who gasped his last breaths on the gallows in the late 18th century.
I had been asked to sketch him on camera for a TV documentary, and I jumped at the chance to pay my respects to a nameless man who had unwittingly assisted generation after generation of artists.
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