Inheritance tracks that take us nowhere | Letters: Jane Kelly and Karl Lam

Once again the fabulously wealthy Duke of Northumberland is selling a family treasure that will go to a foreign owner unless public funds and donations can be raised to keep it in this country (Report, 6 December). The £6.8m auction price achieved in July for The Garden of Eden With the Fall of Man by Jan Brueghel the Elder was double the estimate – probably inflated by media hype – and it will now apparently take more to prevent the painting going abroad.I remember an earlier example