The Telegraph is upset that the UK’s former Ambassador to the UN spent £20,000 on a Warhol for the official residence. But the cool Britons seem to have gotten their money’s work in NYC street cred:

Despite the recession, the Government paid £19,406 at Christie’s in London for Elizabeth II of The United Kingdom, a multicoloured screen print. The cost was shared between the Government Art Collection and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. It bought the work at the peak of the boom in art sales, in October 2008. The work was the centrepiece of the refurbishment of Sir John’s elegant ambassadorial apartment in New York by his wife, Shelley.

“It used to be very oak-panelled and faux-East Coast grand, with big furniture and fusty pictures,” a diplomat said earlier this year. “Now it is one of the most envied diplomatic pads in New York, with trendy chairs, bright fabrics and minimalist white walls featuring modern artists.”

Taxpayers paid £20,000 for Andy Warhol picture for spymaster Sir John Sawers’s flat (Telegraph)