A NAILBOMBER involved in a notorious prison breakout has been paid £375 by the Home Office for one of his paintings.

Matthew Williams, serving five life sentences for a campaign of terror, laughed after learning who had purchased his work.

The painting is one of 77 works by prisoners purchased for a total of £4,887 for the new £311 million Home Office building in Westminster.

Williams, who is in Dovegate jail in Staffordshire, said “One of my paintings was sold for the delicious sum of £375. The buyer? Oh irony — it was the Home Office. It left me laughing, quite literally, all the way to the bank.”

The painting, an image of a London eccentric with his hoard of junk, has yet to be hung at the new building, which opened this year.

Ministers and officials did not know the identity of any of the prisoners who made the works as they were all bought by the Koestler Trust, a prison arts charity founded in 1962 by the writer Arthur Koestler.

The Home Office said it paid the money to the trust and had no knowledge of the artists’ criminal background and that it in no way condoned serious offences.

Williams, 36, from Birkenhead, is serving five life sentences after waging a campaign of terror involving explosives and poison. He was one of three prisoners who escaped from Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight in 1995. Williams had been given welding equipment for art work but used it to make a ladder.

While studying microbiology at Leeds University, Williams burnt down a chapel and stole enough cyanide to kill 300 people.

The sale to the Home Office came after two years of struggle to sell his art and writing, which was initially prevented under prison rules. Williams had tried to sell a radio drama script to the Irish television station RTE in 2002. Changes to the rules, allowing prisoners to earn a legitimate income from their skills, were later accepted by the Prison Service after Williams wrote to the prison ombudsman.

More than £1 million has been spent on art for the new Home Office building including features such as a multicoloured canopy by Liam Gillick and murals by Toby Paterson.

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