Arms, Armour & Militaria

In April this year Spink held an exhibition to mark the centenary of the founding of the RAF, ahead of a dedicated section in its two-day Orders, Decorations and Medals sale the same month.

In this year also marking the centenary of the RAF, Bosleys’ (20% buyer’s premium) fourth annual sale of aviation collectables on September 13, held in conjunction with (and at) sister auction house Marlows in Stafford, included a large number of related items.

If anything sums up the sense of slaughter that came from the British experience of the First World War and how that affected so many families, it is a lot coming up in Bonhams’ November 21 Medals, Bonds, Banknotes and Coins auction.

Before the Iraq invasions in 1991 and 2003 Britain was involved in military operations in the region in both world wars.

A Distinguished Flying Cross medal group offered at Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) on November 7-8 underlines the sometimes rudimentary nature of the embyonic early war in the air.

C&T Auctioneers’ (20% buyer’s premium) November 6 sale titled After the Great War Centenary also marked the final slice of a three-part offering of what specialist Matthew Tredwen called “one of the finest collections of First World War German militaria to have been sold at auction in the UK”.

This classic First World war recruitment poster with the Old Lion of Britain calling on the Young Lions to answer the call to fight is estimated at £200-400 in Onslows’ poster auction on December 14.

A popular form of gift or memento to loved ones as troops left for the front was a ‘sweetheart brooch’.

The Hundred Days Offensive broke the back of German resistance in 1918 and by November the Allies were surging well beyond the once static Western Front.

British Empire soldiers included more than a million Indian Army troops serving overseas.

Such was the scale of the Great War that the Cameronians regiment alone raised 27 battalions from 1914-18.

As soon as the devastating power of machine guns in the First World War became clear, the British Army abandoned its earlier policy of attaching a section of just two guns to each infantry battalion or cavalry regiment.

It was a British engineer, Robert Whitehead (1823-1905) – working in Austria at the instigation of the Austrian Navy – who developed the first self-propelled torpedo in the 1850s.

The centenary of the Armistice has been marked by the appearance of some poignant lots at auction revealing the human cost.

The ‘heroic age’ of Polar Exploration coincided with the First World War. Shackleton’s perilous 1914-17 expedition was conducted against the backdrop of war in the northern hemisphere, while other earlier Polar explorers found themselves caught up in the conflict.

The vast human toll of the First World War did not end with the Armistice. On New Year’s Eve 2018 Oberleutnant Friedrich Ritter Von Röth committed suicide at the age of 25, as a result of being shattered at Germany’s defeat.

The Scottish gun-making workshop of Doune in Perthshire produced pistols that were a firearm of choice for highland clansmen but were also favoured by wealthy socialites.

MADAM – Responding to your article in ATG No 2365 ('UK salerooms 'not aware' of new laws on deactivated firearms'), I felt compelled to write in.

The National Ballistics and Intelligence Service (NABIS) has warned of a rise in defectively deactivated firearms offered at auction since the law changed this summer.

While it was probably pleasing for a buyer at Holts (25% buyer’s premium) to know a pair of Purdey shotguns had previously been owned by ‘God’, or Eric Clapton as less passionate fans of the great guitarist know him, it did not materially affect the £160,000 winning bid.