Arms, Armour & Militaria

Lord Ashcroft has been at the centre of a successful bid to recover 96 medals, including nine Victoria Crosses, stolen from a museum in New Zealand in December.

Two medals awarded to the same man during the Crimean War, but separated for many years in different collections, have been reunited after selling to the same buyer at Smith & Wilde’s March 21 auction of militaria at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

Spink are to put the unrivalled Victoria Cross collection of Lord Ashcroft on display in an 11-day exhibition in their main gallery in April. The exhibition is a forerunner to what is expected to become a permanent public display in two years’ time.

Eleys Auctions in Boston, Lincolnshire have sold by private treaty 43 personal effects of the legendary World War Two double-amputee pilot Douglas Bader.

A JUDGE’S ruling over an antique steel knife has challenged the policy of “Let the Buyer Beware” and may affect auctioneers’ cataloguing practices and their terms and conditions.

At 3ft 21/4in (97cm) long, this exceptionally rare Scottish Highland two-hand sword or claymore dates to the third quarter of the 16th century. So rare is it, in fact, that no other example has appeared on the market in recent years.

This massive silver-gilt shield of Achilles, by Rundell, Bridge & Rundell of London, lost to scholars for the better part of the 20th century, appeared at Sotheby's on December 18 after resurfacing in Belgium.

THIEVES have stolen a collection of war medals Ð including five Victoria Crosses Ð awarded to 12 of New ZealandÕs most highly decorated servicemen. The burglary took place shortly after 1am on December 2 at the Army Museum in Waiouru.

Stella Show Management have said that Antiques at the Armory, the January 18-20 antiques show at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, will go ahead as planned.

Two different pistols with very different stories sold at provincial auctions in the UK in October.

CHARTERHOUSE auctioneers in Sherborne, have broken the auction record for a Military Medal group only two months after the previous one was set.

IT was the first war painting by a Scottish artist to be exhibited in Scotland and was extensively discussed in the Edinburgh and Glasgow newspapers of January 1941.

Suffolk antique tool auctioneer Tony Murland (10% buyer’s premium) is known for his hyperbolic cataloguing but the description accompanying this nearly 400-year-old horn handled hunting knife was a classic.

OLD film footage of youngsters playing amid the rubble of the Blitz-ravaged London showed that even in our darkest hour war could be turned into a game.

NEW YORK’s fairs scene is in some turmoil following a massive rent hike at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the city’s chosen venue for art and antiques fairs.

ON December 28, 1792 Anglo-Irish statesman, orator and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97) enacted the melodrama in Parliament that became known as the Dagger Scene.

"They kept their resolution longer than I expected, keeping us in action from 7 in the morning till [?] in the afternoon and to carry the scene on in a military manner they came down upon us, sounding the charge and their army colours flying, and in this manner continued till they were beaten to atoms. "

On September 10, Litts, the UK’s largest retailer of sporting guns, is holding its inaugural auction of stock.

“WE will make a name for ourselves and Australia tomorrow.” This was how Captain Shout fired up his band of troops the night before the assault at Gallipoli in the First World War.

Before The Great War the Lincoln engineering company, William Foster and Co, was synonymous with the very best threshing machines. By 1918, managing director Sir William Tritton, together with Major W.G. Wilson, had been credited by the Royal Commission as the inventor of an armoured fighting vehicle forever known as the tank.