Auctioneers

The battleground is Tibet. Invading troops massacre poorly armed peasant soldiers standing bravely in their way, doomed to defeat against a much more powerful, modern opponent.

A printed broadside from 1791 that gained visitors admission to Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, the home of Whig politician Horace Walpole, came up at auction this month and sold at £2000.

Global sales for the first half of 2013 at Sotheby’s totalled $3.14bn (£2.05bn), their latest set of results reveal.

Estimated at £10,000-15,000, this silver-gilt and ivory guilloché enamel desk clock by Carl Fabergé sold for £65,000 at George Kidner in Lymington, Hampshire.

A 1937 oil painting by LS Lowry which he made while on holiday in Scotland will be offered at Bonhams next sale of Modern British and Irish art in London on November 20.

Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas, are claiming a new auction record for an insert movie poster.

The country house sale of the summer, Bonhams’ on-site, two-day auction of the contents of Trelissick House in Cornwall, including The Copeland China collection of Spode, totalled £2.06m, with every lot sold.

Herefordshire was judged a little too remote for most Midlands industrialists seeking a rural retreat in the Arts and Crafts idiom.

A medal given to a remarkable sailor who was given the honour of conveying Napoleon to exile in Elba in 1813 as a reward for his daring exploits in the Royal Navy has made a record price.

For the second time in a decade, on August 10, Heritage in Dallas will offer for sale the prototype of the original GI Joe figure.

The British government has placed a temporary export bar on a rare piece of jewellery that belonged to Jane Austen.

While there were plenty of high-end clocks on offer in the London auction rooms and fairs over the summer season, Bonhams were the only house to offer dedicated clock sales.

The sale of Fine Clocks, Barometers and Scientific Instruments conducted by Dreweatts at Donnington Priory on September 4 will include this well-documented William and Mary brass lantern clock by Thomas Veale of Chew Magna.

The hiking of premiums in March does not appear to have put buyers off at Christie’s.

At Dreweatts’ first stand-alone sale of jewellery in London this version of Salvador Dalí’s ‘The Eye Of Time’ (El Ojo Del Tempo) brooch sold for £75,000.

This week sees Sotheby’s staging their annual exhibition of work by the company’s employees, showcasing the artistic talents of over 60 members of staff.

We can be too quick to write the obituary of the passionate old-school collector. Thankfully, they are still with us.

An extraordinary relic of the African slave trade was among the headline lots from a three-day sale held by Lockdales in Martlesham Heath near Ipswich last month.

The most stunning price of London’s summer auction season came at Christie’s last week when the competition that emerged on ‘Love among the Ruins’ by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-98) was one of the strongest ever seen for a Victorian picture.

Drawn from life at Nelson’s home, Merton, just weeks before the Battle of Trafalgar, this pastel portrait by the marine artist John Whichelo sold for £52,000 at Sotheby’s.