News

AT Sotheby's on July 17, a wooden file box containing nearly 4000 index cards compiled by the father of professional forensic pathology, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, sold at £15,000 to a collector.

The FBI are attempting to track down the rightful owners of 137 works of art, discovered in a New York apartment, which are thought to have been stolen in the 1960s and 70s.

A previously unheard tape of a Beatles recording session, in which John Lennon and Paul McCartney break into giggles and crack jokes, has fetched £10,000 at Cameo auctioneers in Midgham, Berkshire.

Stolen art and antiques valued at tens of millions of pounds remain at large despite the incarceration of five members of the notorious Johnson family who bragged in a 2005 BBC documentary that they would gladly steal from “the lords, the sirs and the ladies”.

Isle of Wight firm Island Auction Rooms established a new record for a clock sold by a UK provincial auctioneer when this remarkable longcase took £240,000 on August 7.

SOTHEBY’S dependence on the contemporary art market could hardly be clearer than in their latest set of figures.

Christie’s have announced that they are to sell the multi-million collection of Yves St Laurent, who died in June, and his business partner Pierre Bergé in February next year.