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In our weekend series, Antiques Trade Gazette brings you a selection of quotes from dealers, auctioneers, collectors and others.

A selection of Indian Company School paintings is among the lots on offer at Bristol Auction Rooms next month.

Poor old Newark. A bit like Belgium and Poland over the centuries, in the English Civil War the English Midlands town ended up in the wrong place in wartime – stuck in the middle - as armies trampled back and forth across it or lay siege. The town’s misfortune is a coin collector’s gain, however, as the lozenge-shaped coins minted in Newark during the conflict have become familiar and fairly common visitors to the salerooms.

Christie’s has appointed Jonathan Stone and Tina Zonars to the positions of co-chairmen in the Asian art department.

Martians land in Surrey and terrorise much of southern England in tripedal war-machines equipped with death-rays before finally succumbing to terrestrial bacteria. That, put very simply, is the story line of HG Wells’ 1898 novel, ‘The War of the Worlds’, an apocalyptic vision that retains an iconic place in the realms of science fiction.

A masonic ceremonial sword which disappeared in a car theft has been recovered after emerging at a London auction house.

Among the lots at Bloomsbury Auctions’ upcoming sale, The Glory of Science, is ‘the first space selfie’.

Two New York antiques dealers, owners of an upmarket Manhattan antiques shop, yesterday pleaded guilty to selling modern ivory objects and uncarved elephant tusks worth more than $4.5m.

When London’s Tottenham Court Road Underground station started its £400m refurb, one of the trickiest tasks was not the tracks, the signals, ticket office or any of the usual suspects. Instead, it was tackling 950 square metres of mosaics designed by one of the most celebrated of 20th century British artists.

Demand for Beatles memorabilia is always high, so for rarities in this collecting field the prices will naturally be hefty.

St James’s textile specialist S Franses has won an appeal in court for the right to stay in its gallery in central London.

A collection of poetry to be sold at Tennants Auctioneers in Yorkshire includes some of the early works of Hobbit author JRR Tolkien.

The English and Continental ceramics specialists Stockspring Antiques has decided to make a change in direction.

In an August 2016 ATG wrote that the scrimshaw market had been in the doldrums but was showing signs of a return to buoyancy. Judging by the latest results from Massachusetts auction house Eldred’s, bidders are certainly prepared to push the boat out for the best examples.

The Bruton Museum in Somerset has bought a rare silver tankard at nearby saleroom Lawrences of Crewkerne.

Three Francis Bacon artworks stolen in Madrid in 2015 have been recovered by Spanish police near Barcelona.

A photographic portrait of Charles Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron was among the lots drawing strong competition at Sotheby’s sale of works from one of the largest private collections of material relating to the great naturalist ever formed.