While he is a long way from using the title “by appointment to Her Royal Highness”, Dr Lillford is hearing a lot of jokes about crown jewels during his more intimate care in the rehabilitation unit at Coffs Harbour Base Hospital.

In his youth, Dr Lillford was a frequent visitor to the Royal Library during his PhD of a forensic examination of the works of satirical artist William Hogarth.

This insight means the former professor of fine art is acutely aware of the exalted company of artists in the royal collection.

“The Royal Library has more Leonardo da Vinci works than Italy,” Dr Lillford said.

A number of works by leading Tudor portrait painter Hans Holbein also feature in the collection.

“It’s a great honour, of course,” Dr Lillford said.

Dr Lillford’s other works are part of collections in the British Museum, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and The Hermitage in Russia.

He was the only artist sponsored to enter the ‘Chunnel’, as the tunnel between England and France is widely known, during construction.

The National Science Museum sponsored his work and the drawing of the Channel Tunnel boring machine is one of a series of 24 works completed at this time.

When he retired after his career teaching infant school children through to tertiary students at Yale and Richmond universities, Dr Lillford looked at a map and found the Southern Hemisphere equivalent latitude location to his favourite place in Spain and applied to migrate to Coffs Harbour.

A week after migrating he had his first of his six strokes, despite being fit enough to swim five miles before leaving England.

He has just experienced five weeks of “wall-to-wall attention” as he recovers from a cerebral hemorrhage in hospital.