Figurine

English ceramics may have been the junior partner to their Continental cousins in lot terms at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) on June 27, making up just 81 of the 230 lots, but they provided the two highest prices.

This quartet of Meissen white figures from Augustus the Strong’s Japanese Palace was a centrepiece of the June 13 evening sale from Longleat, contributing £2.9m to the overall total.

Mention rare animals to a Lowestoft resident and you are likely to be directed to Suffolk’s only wildlife park on the outskirts of town, where African lions and ring-tailed lemurs roam the saltmarshes.

The curious inhabitants of Middle Earth have existed quite happily (and vividly) in the minds of readers since J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings first appeared in the 1950s.

There was no charitable quarter given to rival bidders when this plaster bust of General Charles Booth took centre stage at Duke’s (15 per cent buyer’s premium) dispersal of the Timothy Rich collection of Staffordshire figures in Dorchester on January 24.