UK

M1, one of the most sought-after UK registration numbers, set a new world record price for a car number plate when it sold for £300,000 at Bonhams’ Goodwood Festival of Speed sale of Sports, Competition and Collectors’ Motor Cars and Automobilia on July 7.

THIS year's RICS conference will be in Cambridge from Friday to Sunday, September 15-17. More details to follow, but block out the dates in your diaries now.

An early 19th century boxwood and bone Napoleonic prisoner-of-war model of the Third Rate 74-gun HMS Mars fired a shot across the bows at Hampton & Littlewood's (15% buyer's premium) Maritime Sale in Exeter on June 21 when it set a new house record of £60,000.

THIS summer's Kensington Church Street Open Evening on June 29 proved a notable success for the many visitors who enjoyed the hospitality and company of the street's many dealers.

There was nothing dull or predictable about the coin sale at Spink on June 29 when an expectant crowd gathered to witness the sale of one of the rarest of English Medieval coins: the gold Double Leopard florin of Edward III which was minted for only a few months in 1344.

More suited to the wall than the bed and more a piece of social history than a functional textile, this 19th century appliqué felt coverlet reaped the rewards when it sold for £24,000 (plus premium) at Kerry Taylor auctions in association with Sotheby's on June 26.

EAST Anglia's top fairs circuit, Lomax Antiques Fairs, has been sold to John Harbottle, a regular exhibitor at Lomax events.

Record turnover at London flagship sales but the buzz of the 1980s has gone

Compiled in the second half of the 15th century, the Fechtbuch of Hans Talhoffer (fl. 1435-82), the most celebrated and experienced fighting-master of the age, is a veritable encyclopaedia of medieval combat.

A panel of judges, including interior designers Alidad and Kit Kemp and representatives from World of Interiors and Homes & Gardens, deemed Guinevere Antiques to have the best stand of The Summer Fair, Olympia.

Given today’s obsession with celebrity, especially Royal celebrity, it was always on the cards that Christie’s sale last week of Princess Margaret’s jewellery, silver and other personal belongings was going to make much more than the £2m-3m predicted.

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.

This very fine early Regency period drum table c.1805 in a faded honey-coloured rosewood prompted an extraordinary bidding battle at Clevedon Salerooms near Bristol on June 1. Estimated at £4000-6000, it sold at a house record £200,000 (plus 15% buyer’s premium) to a member of the London trade. The underbidder was also a London dealer.

As if they will need it, some of the lots included in Christie’s June 13-14 sale of items from the collection of HRH The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930-2002) have received a little posthumous pepping up.

Southampton Solent University will officially launch their new Art, Design and Society Scheme on Friday June 23.

JUST weeks after Clarion abandoned plans for reviving a Glasgow fair a group of Scottish dealers have announced a new Scottish event, The Merchants’ Hall Fine Art & Antiques Fair to be held in Edinburgh from September 22-24.

This is the month the trade in London really goes into overdrive, starting this week with the opening of The Summer Fair, Olympia on Thursday (June 8). Olympia is just one of four major London June fairs and these are complemented by an increasing number of dealer exhibitions around the capital.

AN unseen and apparently unique collection of photographs, letters and maps that illuminates the campaigns of Field Marshall Montgomery in the Second World War has emerged at Kent auctioneers Watermans.

Giving Scotland’s once-neglected art glass further standing in the saleroom, a good range of Monart and Ysasrt glass emerged at auction recently North of the Boarder.