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The BBC has put the production of antiques game show Bargain Hunt out to tender for a two-year contract, despite speculation that the long-running programme, now in its 50th series, would be axed in a drive to boost the quality of daytime TV output.

Having for decades been like one of those obscure religions in which passionate believers go about their business to the benign bemusement of everyone else, studio pottery is winning converts by the day.

Harking back to when the Netherlands was a powerful player in the tea trade, a rare, early 18th century silver caddy attracted international interest at Halls (20% buyer’s premium) of Shrewsbury.

Made by William Selwood (1607-53), one of London’s finest clockmakers before the ‘Golden Age’, this 16½in (42cm) mid-17th century brass lantern clock topped Ewbank’s (22.5% buyer’s premium) spring sale in Send.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

In answer to the question “why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” mountaineer George Mallory, who died on it in 1924, famously replied “because it’s there”.

Marines and seascapes were a strong feature of Woolley & Wallis’ latest picture sale and, while there were plenty of affordable works on offer (see separate story), the sale was led by one of the larger works by a well-recognised name.

ATG’s calendar of book auctions taking place in the UK and Ireland from April 4-27, 2018.

The panel of kantha stitching from West Bengal shown below will be for sale with dealer Jennifer Evans, aka Jenpatola, for £79 at The Textile Society’s antique and vintage textile fair at the Armitage Centre in Manchester on Sunday April 15.

In a career of remarkable highs and lows, incorporating high political office, financial scandal and near bankruptcy, enormous success as a novelist and imprisonment for perjury during a libel case that he had won years earlier, Jeffrey Archer has himself been the subject of many a caricature and cartoon.

At some point in its life, an early photographically illustrated work on the art of wood turning offered in a recent Exeter sale had been converted for use as a postcard album, but it still sold for a four-times estimate £4300.

During the later decades of the 20th century, post-war British artist Alan Davie (1920-2014) fell into relative obscurity. However, recent months have been eventful for the painter’s legacy.

The first Cotswolds Decorative, Antiques & Art Fair of the year comes to Westonbirt School this month. Running from April 13-15, the 29-year-old event hosts 43 dealers (fully booked), particularly those from around the west of England.

Good things come to those who wait. That is exactly what happened for Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts. At last year’s TEFAF Maastricht a Dutch collector showed interest in a painting on his stand by Jacob Henricus Maris.

The English-born political theorist Thomas Paine lived through the most turbulent of times.

MADAM – I sympathise with your correspondent Phil Higginbotham (Letters, ATG No 2335), who decries booksellers’ notes on endpapers.

The 96-lot section of studio pottery offered at Woolley & Wallis’ (25% buyer’s premium) wide-ranging ceramics sale at Salisbury on March 21 included a private collection of the work of David Leach (1911-2005) and Walter Keeler (b.1942).

A collection of Outsider art produced in a former psychiatric hospital in north London will be offered for sale at Edinburgh auction house Lyon & Turnbull.

One of the aspects of the antiques fairs which are so much a part of the trade’s lifeblood is often their sheer longevity.