This column has several times featured the sale of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the first and greatest classic of modern economic thought – and also its exponential rise in value. On December 12, for instance, I watched Smith’s personal copy sell in London for £900,000.
Bonham’s pre-Christmas sale of fine books and manuscripts saw Britain’s most famous atlas bid to an astonishing £35,000.
I feel a toy coming on for Christmas – and there are few better than this vintage nodding Santa, the subject of much admiration at Bertoia’s seasonal sale in New Jersey last month.
WOMEN voted in parliamentary elections for the first time on this corresponding Saturday a century ago. The General Election of 14 December 1918 was the culmination of a 50-year struggle to win the vote – a campaign remembered today by streets in Perth and Dundee named after the militant suffragette Ethel Moorhead.
I’m of a certain vintage musically – old enough to play vinyl, tapes, CDs and, to show off, by turning on a blue and cream plastic Decca wall-mounted radio from the sixties.
THE STAR lot in Lyon & Turnbull’s art sale in the capital on Thursday is (for me, anyway) John Duncan Fergusson’s Seated Nude, a small bronze sculpture depicting a woman almost as if she were in a trance, seated with her head facing intently forwards.
Book Week Scotland, the great annual celebration of reading, continues across the country today and tomorrow.
As your Saturday breakfast is comfortably consigned, one of the greatest sales ever held is continuing à toute vitesse at the Drouot auction house in Paris.
The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 awakens special emotions.
Remember the famous Cottingley Fairies? They were among the most remarkable images of the 20th century – photographs of two girls with fairies in a Yorkshire garden, produced in 1917 as a practical joke.