Auctions

A Rolex once owned by actor Paul Newman has set an auction record of $15.5m (£11.85m) at Phillips' inaugural watch auction in New York.

Sotheby’s sale of works from the collection of the British artist Howard Hodgkin (1932-2017) raised a hammer total of £3.65m with 86% sold by lot in its Bond Street rooms on October 24.

Football trivia time: who was the last player to score five goals for England in a game – but never played for the national team at Wembley ever again?

Fancy owning one of the earliest vehicles on the road and racing it down to Brighton? Now’s your chance as more than 20 vintage cars, many restored and fit to compete in the 120-year old veteran run, are to be sold in early November.

Works by artists Antony Gormley and Maggi Hambling were among 130 lots sold at auction to raise more than £100,000 to create a national centre for the artist Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88) in Sudbury.

Another specialist who used to be at the former Christie’s South Kensington saleroom has found a new role in the auctions world.

'No, you can't chop your Poppa up in Massachusetts', the refrain from a once hugely popular song, and the verse from a skipping-rope rhyme with which this article ends, both derive from the controversy that continues to this day regarding one of America's most famous murder trials – and to a legal document sold on October 19 by Heritage Auctions of Dallas.

“A disgusting object” that may be of “some whimsical interest to an obsessive collector” is how Auberon Waugh described a telescopic ear trumpet as used by his father in his later years. Disgusting he may have regarded it, but far more palatable to auctioneers and dealers are the prices of such objects that collectors are prepared to pay.

Newcastle auction house Anderson & Garland has set a number of new artist records following the sale of the UK’s largest collections of Outsider art.

The final artwork by Sir Winston Churchill is to be offered at auction with a £50,000-80,000 estimate.

The last known letter written on the Titanic by a victim before it sunk in the Atlantic in 1912 has set an auction record for a letter from the doomed ship.

Is demand for the great Dane becoming more international? Works by the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) typically feature in 19th century European art sales but Sotheby’s have selected an Impressionist & Modern Art evening auction in New York for its latest offering.