Kent

A flying log book belonging to one of the female pilots of the Air Training Auxiliary (ATA) who became famous for ferrying planes in the Second World War has been sold at Kent saleroom C&T.

The annual 'Decorative Living Fair' will stage its 14th outing on Friday and Saturday, May 17-18, at the beautiful location of the park near Tunbridge Wells.

Decoratives dealer Tara Franklin has run the small and well-regarded three-day vintage and antiques fair in the village of Penshurst in Kent since 2015.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the British were clearly impressed by the French lancer regiments they encountered during the Napoleonic Wars. The first British lancer regiments were established in 1816, just a year after Waterloo.

A charity antiques fair in aid of a Kent hospice will run at the Skinners School in Tunbridge Wells on Sunday, April 28.

A monthly brocante has launched in the pretty Kent town of Westerham, famed for nearby Chartwell, the former home of Winston Churchill.

Two single-owner collections built up over lifetimes were well received at Canterbury Auction Galleries (20% buyer’s premium) on February 5-6.

This rare 1870s Zulu shield or Isihlangu below sold for £1650 at the C&T (20% buyer’s premium) auction of the Mick Woodfield collection of Zulu and other tribal weapons in Tunbridge Wells on January 9.

Serendipity had it that two important, but scantily catalogued, lots of European glass emerged for sale in the south of England in early January.

Originally given as presents to infants, early dolls, rocking horses and even board games can now inspire passions among collectors far surpassing the delight of children on Christmas morning and far exceeding most doting parents’ budgets.

C&T Auctioneers of Kent is launching antiques and collectors sales, with its first taking place on April 3 next year.

When Alan Wardle’s niece searched online for family history she uncovered his father’s long-lost First World War presentation pocket watch coming up at auction.

C&T Auctioneers’ (20% buyer’s premium) November 6 sale titled After the Great War Centenary also marked the final slice of a three-part offering of what specialist Matthew Tredwen called “one of the finest collections of First World War German militaria to have been sold at auction in the UK”.

A German silver cigarette case, sold for £4600 at C&T Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium) in Tunbridge Wells on October 24, was engraved with a detailed scene from the Siege of Mafeking – the famous Boer War defence of a small town commanded by Robert Baden-Powell.

For a Communist tyrant, Joseph Stalin remains remarkably popular in the capitalist world of UK auctions – the latest evidence provided by a rare cast bronze death mask offered at Canterbury Auction Galleries (24% buyer’s premium).