I BID YOU FAREWELL. This item is unavailable.I BID YOU FAREWELL

I Bid You Farewell captures the drama, wit and wisdom of a lifetime in the antiques trade. Set against the backdrop of Suffolk’s market towns and quiet villages, Lanham charts an era of remarkable change in Britain’s auction houses, from the austere post-war years through the booming era of the 1980s.

This is the story of a young auctioneer, starting at seventeen in a cattle market, qualifying and then buying a rundown rural auction business. Readers will discover how, from a standing start, with no telephone in his hired hall, Lanham achieved over a hundred world-wide record prices of fine art at auction. He explains the complex psychology of dealers and collectors and reveals the stories behind these extraordinary prices. Being on his own, using his personal observation, he was able to speedily change course to rapidly unfolding new markets caused firstly by Harold Wilson devaluing the pound and then Margaret Thatcher selling off ‘the family silver’. It is a true insight into the secrets of the auctioneer’s mind. Written as an amusing whole-life adventure of numerous stories, it shares much knowledge, wisdom and humour.

Rich in character and incident, with an insider’s eye for detail and a storyteller’s gift for bringing the past to life, Lanham shares the secrets of the trade while documenting a vanishing world of traditional market towns and autonomous local businesses. I Bid You Farewell is not just the story of one man’s career – it’s a love letter to the art of the auction and a valuable historical document of Britain’s antiques trade during a period of unprecedented change.

Neil Lanham was born in 1938 and has lived all his life in Suffolk.

After the death of his father at 5 years old, he went into a shell but became extremely observant of the things around him. Following a car accident, he was told that he should not play football again and realised that there was much happening that went unobserved on the football field, so he learned a method of taking every possession down in shorthand and eventually put over 4,000 games onto a computer.

From this, Neil recorded that there are laws of chance that apply equally to all teams at every level however they play. They are the same today and this was used to help obtain back-to-back promotions by Wimbledon, Cambridge United, Sheffield United and success at other football clubs.

Neil has read academic papers on the fit of chance in football at Eindhoven and Lisbon and on the oral tradition in Song and Story at Cardiff, Swansea, Aberdeen and Newcastle Universities as well as writing books on his life as an auctioneer.