Elizabeth Meek couldn’t stop sketching. She worked as a nurse, but spent her spare time drawing her colleagues — until, one day, the urge became too strong and she quit her job to become an artist. Several decades later, she has not only gained an MBE for services to the Arts, but also painted two portraits of The King , the latest of which is a tiny miniature that The Queen wears at state functions.

‘Really, when I look back, to leave nursing and become an artist with no support — I don’t know what I was thinking, but I did it,’ she says. It was a complete leap in the dark for a young woman brought up in the non-conformist community of the Plymouth Brethren in Devon. Entirely self-taught, she knew nothing about the art world: ‘I was quite naive about what happened out there.’ However

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