Collectables

The Bodleian Library in Oxford has bought the historic customer ledgers of venerable Oxford shoemaker Ducker & Son.

A cold-painted bronze of amateur golfing champion John Laidlay is among the pieces appearing at Bonhams' upcoming auction in Los Angeles next week.

Privately printed and distributed in Exeter in 1787, probably in quite small numbers, a copy of John Grave Simcoe’s ‘Journal of the Operations of the Queen’s Rangers, from the End of the Year 1777, to the Conclusion of the Late American War’ drew strong interest at a Bonhams New York sale earlier this month.

A 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III DHC ‘Chinese Eye’ with a musical pedigree comes under the hammer at H&H Classics next week.

An auction house which sold a 1937 handwritten letter by Beatrix Potter is offering another fascinating collection related to the children’s author just over two months later.

A signed limited edition copy of ‘The Wind in the Willows’ is among the books on offer at the upcoming Edinburgh Book Fair.

Bound together some 200 years ago, rare copies of two Elizabethan satires that were first condemned and then burned will be among the books offered by Bonhams at the Glyn Cywarch sale later this month.

The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) has launched a mentoring programme to help encourage the next generation of book dealers.

'The youth of today are stuck inside playing computer games getting square eyes' is a familiar refrain from the old and often grumpy, such as, er, me. However, in the not-so-distant past it was Lego keeping kids fixated indoors and before that, the marvels of Meccano.

Letters from the late Princess Diana surfaced at auction earlier this year in Cambridge and now another set is being offered in Gloucestershire.

Latest auction results in the film poster market show that for the right designs with a licence to thrill the buyers will follow.

A 1936 Lagonda Rapier barn find will be among the lots at the Bonhams sale of the new Lord Harlech’s family collection.

King Richard III is the Marmite Monarch. You love him or you hate him. On one hand he is regarded as a monster, on the other as misunderstood and unfairly maligned.