Jeeves and Wooster take top price, with War Horse and James Bond joint second in National Literacy Trust’s Books about Town auction
A sale of “book benches”, designed to illustrate classics of London literature, has raised more than £250,000 for a reading charity.
The 50 brightly coloured benches have been scattered around the capital over the summer in the Books about Town project, a collaboration between public art impresarios Wild in Art and the National Literacy Trust, to celebrate London’s literary history while raising money for the NLT’s work to improve literacy in the UK.
At Tuesday’s auction, conducted by Sotheby’s at the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank, the top price of £9,500 was commanded by a Jeeves and Wooster bench, featuring the legs of a presumably legless Bertie stretched out on the croquet lawn at Blandings castle, beside his upturned cocktail glass. It was painted by Gordon Allum. A James Bond bench, painted by Freyja Dean, and a War Horse bench, painted by Gerard Strong from illustrations by the National Theatre stage designer Rae Smith, took £9,000 each.
A bench dedicated to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, as chosen by a vote of Guardian readers and designed by Chris Riddell, made £5,000. The Neverwhere bench has spent the summer in the foyer of the Guardian’s offices at Kings Place, London, where it became a place of pilgrimage for fans of the fantasy writer, one of whom was revealed on Twitter to have proposed to his girlfriend on it.
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The 50 brightly coloured benches have been scattered around the capital over the summer in the Books about Town project, a collaboration between public art impresarios Wild in Art and the National Literacy Trust, to celebrate London’s literary history while raising money for the NLT’s work to improve literacy in the UK.
At Tuesday’s auction, conducted by Sotheby’s at the Purcell Room on London’s South Bank, the top price of £9,500 was commanded by a Jeeves and Wooster bench, featuring the legs of a presumably legless Bertie stretched out on the croquet lawn at Blandings castle, beside his upturned cocktail glass. It was painted by Gordon Allum. A James Bond bench, painted by Freyja Dean, and a War Horse bench, painted by Gerard Strong from illustrations by the National Theatre stage designer Rae Smith, took £9,000 each.
A bench dedicated to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, as chosen by a vote of Guardian readers and designed by Chris Riddell, made £5,000. The Neverwhere bench has spent the summer in the foyer of the Guardian’s offices at Kings Place, London, where it became a place of pilgrimage for fans of the fantasy writer, one of whom was revealed on Twitter to have proposed to his girlfriend on it.
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