Auctioneers

US West Coast auction firm PBA Galleries is holding its first sale dedicated to writing instruments in its San Francisco rooms on July 19.

Watercolours and drawings from the personal collection of artist Sir Quentin Blake (b. 1932) have been sold at Christie’s for over £750,000.

The cost of smoking is going crazy – someone has just paid £29,000 for a packet of cigarettes in the West Midlands.

Reporter: “Well John, how was the trip over, did you all get bored on the flight, or did you have things to keep you entertained, that y’all were doing?” John Lennon: ‘Well, err, we all got stoned.”

A rediscovered landscape attributed to Lucian Freud, found under another painting, has sold at a top-estimate £30,000 at the Sworders saleroom.

The original drawing of the map of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood by EH Shepard has been sold for a hammer price of £350,000, setting an auction record for a book illustration.

The former Christie’s chairman and the last surviving member of Sir Winston Churchill's post-war government, Lord Carrington, has died aged 99.

The Elgar Foundation is calling for the return of a draft score of the Enigma Variations by Sir Edward Elgar shown on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow.

It has been described as perhaps the most curious regiment in the British Army, but the well-known names associated with the Artists Rifles were certainly not obscure.