UK

In our weekend series, Antiques Trade Gazette brings you a selection of quotes from dealers, auctioneers, collectors and others – from inventive anglers and atomic bombs to those collectors who are getting cannier all the time.

The 26th Winter Art & Antiques Fair, Olympia opens for its preview on October 31 and visitors can get into the Halloween spirit by going for exhibitors’ spooky offerings.

John Lennon’s letter to the Queen returning his MBE could make its £60,000 for the vendor who acquired it for only £10.

Stamford dealer Stuart Porter has been sentenced to five years and four months behind bars after pleading guilty to fraud charges.

Candice Brown, the winner of this year’s Great British Bake Off, has revealed her love of antiques and hopes to open a vintage shop.

Anthony Pratt, managing director of The Canterbury Auction Galleries, has been portrayed as The Knight from the Canterbury Tales in a mural unveiled earlier this month in the Kent city’s high street.

A new record for an empty English medicine bottle was set by BBR Auctions in Elsecar, North Yorkshire when a Victorian flask of ‘Dr Sibley’s Solar Tincture’ took £8200.

Well-known general valuers Rachel Doerr and Sean McIlroy launch a new UK valuations firm this month.

A new group for book collectors and enthusiasts is set to launch at the University of London this Friday.

A limited edition photo of two members of The Beatles and a new signed monograph by the photographer who took it are part of a 107-lot timed charity auction that closes on November 6.

The collection of the late Asian art valuer Richard Cole will be sold at auction next month.

A key which opened a life-jacket locker on the Titanic was one of the highlights of Henry Aldridge & Son’s auction last week.

It is not always the most obviously valuable coins that make the most at auction. Or even the ones with the highest original value. A humble Irish 20p dating from the relatively recent year of 1985 is a good case in point.

C&T Auctioneers will hold its first sale dedicated to mechanical, music scientific instruments and technical apparatus under its newly appointed specialist Laurence Fisher on November 2.

Art Market Minds, the organisers of the annual Art Business Conference, are partnering with law firm K&L Gates to launch a seminar next month focusing on risk management in the art market.

Michael Danaher, 50, who tortured and murdered Oxford book dealer Adrian Greenwood during a robbery targeting a £50,000 first edition of ‘The Wind In The Willows’, was yesterday given a life sentence, with a minimum term of 34 years.

A BBC One documentary by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall called 'Saving Africa’s Elephants: Hugh and the Ivory War' will be aired tonight at 9pm.

A near total sell-out greeted Sotheby’s sale of Indian miniatures from the Khosrovani-Diba collection offered as part of London’s Indian and Islamic art series.

The next generation of Asian art experts will be the focus of a Lyon & Turnbull panel discussion in partnership with ATG as part of the ‘Asian Art in London’ festival in November.

The government is hoping to find a UK-based buyer to pay £67,500 for a 300-year-old tapestry to prevent it from leaving the country.