Swindon

BIGGLES had a big day planned at Dominic Winter’s Swindon salerooms on June 24, with just over 100 lots on offer, mostly from one collection.

THE estimates were rather modest, but prices paid for some of the Biggles books offered as part of a May 21 sale held by Keys of Aylsham bode well for the Biggles collection that Dominic Winter are to sell on June 24. In Aylsham, Hamilton copies of The Black Peril of c.1936, in soiled blue cloth, and The Cruise of the Condor, an undated Ace series title with adverts for Spring 1937, were valued at around £40 apiece but sold for £1050 and £480 respectively.

KIDSON-Trigg (15% buyer's premium) reported a healthy turnout for their 725-lot February 26 sale with steady interest for collectable ceramics such as Beswick and the better-quality furniture attracting a mixture of local and UK private and trade buyers.

Inherently rare – in occupied France you wouldn’t want to be caught with a copy – this flimsy sheet of propaganda issued by the maquis at the height of WWII comes up for sale at Dominic Winter Book Auctions in Swindon on August 28.

SOLD at £1200 to Jarndyce in this sale of photographs, historical documents, autographs and ephemera was an 1838 manuscript of The Student, a play by Frederick Bate.

In 1805, William Blake was commissioned by Robert Harley Cromek to make a set of 40 drawings to illustrate Robert Blair’s poem The Grave, 20 of which Cromek proposed to have engraved by Blake.

Illustrated right are three of the 215 lots that made up the collection formed by Bob Scoales, a member of the Japan Society sold at Dominic Winter, Swindon on June 20-21. • Though many of the books naturally refer to Japan’s earlier history, most were written in the wake of Perry’s US naval expedition of 1850-52 and the opening up of the country to foreigners, but one notable exception was a Narrative of My Captivity in Japan in the Years 1811-13 by Captain V.M. Golownin.

UK: ILLUSTRATED here are two items used to decorate the covers of the sale catalogue issued for by Dominic Winter for their May 17 Sports sale.

UK: I THINK I am right in saying that no James Bond book, at least no uninscribed copy, has ever before reached five figures at auction, but the Dominic Winter sale of March 7 added that required extra nought when an absolutely splendid copy of Ian Fleming’s first Bond spy story, Casino Royale of 1953, was bid up to £11,400. There was stiff competition from several London dealers, but in the end it went to Bromlea & Jonkers.

UK: THE title page had a semi-circular portion excised from the outer margin, but this copy of the 1962 first of Dick Francis’ annual racing thrillers, Dead Cert, had a jacket and it sold for £2050 to Bromlea & Jonkers at Dominic Winter's sale held on January 31.

UK: A 44-lot collection of books and manuscripts on heraldry was a feature of the January 31 sale held by Dominic Winter.

UK: ONE of a group of seven newspapers, plus a printed edict, issued in March 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian revolution, which sold for £400 (Hanson). They were apparently distributed free in the streets of Petrograd and these copies were acquired by Gertrude Hitchcock, who was there working for a British engineering company at the time.

UK: SERIALISED in Public School magazine before appearing in book form in 1902, The Pothunters was P.G. Wodehouse’s first book, and this first issue copy in royal blue cloth with silver gilt decoration made £720 (Marchpane) in Swindon.

UK: THE general and specialist art sales held in Swindon in December are getting fairly short shrift here – 1350 lots were offered over two days – but before this report appeared, the Wiltshire firm had already held their first sales of the new year and the last of the old must necessarily be tidied away.