Letter

Famous for her children’s stories of Peter Rabbit and friends, Beatrix Potter Heelis (1866-1943) was a prolific letter writer.

The last known letter written on the Titanic by a victim before it sunk in the Atlantic in 1912 has set an auction record for a letter from the doomed ship.

A letter written by author Jane Austen to her favourite niece reveals her wit as she amusingly parodies a gothic novel the pair had read.

Delays and overspends on the Great Western route out of London are frustrating but letters up for auction on April 29 reveal that things didn’t always go smoothly even for the brilliant engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

While relations between the English/Unionist and the Scottish powers-that-be are not exactly cordial at the moment, hopefully it will not lead to battle. If a referendum is indeed held to decide the fate of the union, a ballot rather than the bullet should be sufficient.

An auction house which sold a 1937 handwritten letter by Beatrix Potter is offering another fascinating collection related to the children’s author just over two months later.

Letters from the late Princess Diana surfaced at auction earlier this year in Cambridge and now another set is being offered in Gloucestershire.

The beautiful Beatrix Potter children’s books are highly collectable in themselves but the author’s world provides a far wider and very popular collecting scene.

America’s previously neglected founding father Alexander Hamilton is now firmly back to prominence after the Broadway hit ‘Hamilton’, which won eleven Tony Awards last year. The show is now coming to London's West End this year.

A handwritten poem by Anne Frank has sold at auction in the Netherlands at €140,000 (£119,000).

An impressive collection of pictures, studio pottery, furniture, personal effects and letters has been consigned to auctioneers Mitchells of Cockermouth from the estate of Mary Burkett, former director of Abbot Hall art gallery in Kendal.

Only a year before the centenary of the Easter Rising, a powerful letter by the Anglo-Irish diplomat and Irish nationalist Roger David Casement (1864-1916) has surfaced in South Africa.

An autographed letter signed from Charlotte Brontë doubled its estimate to make £24,000 at Lyon & Turnbull’s September 4 rare books, maps and manuscripts sale in Edinburgh.

A letter written by pioneering scientist Dr Francis Crick containing what is probably the first description he gave of the discovery of DNA has been sold for a world auction record.

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam has acquired an important collection of letters, photos and documents relating to Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank.