A little bid of Harold
Our Paul on a bargain hunt at Wilson sale
HAROLD Wilson’s pipe handles well and his Gannex mac is a good fit but I could never fill his polished brown shoes.
And I couldn’t afford any of them yesterday, when the possessions of Labour’s most successful PM went under the hammer. His trademark raincoat, the gift of crooked textile tycoon Lord Kagan, was offered at a minimum £200 but made £500 in the political sale of the century – a Downing Street version of Bargain Hunt.
I wasn’t the only oldie in the Hansons Auctioneers at Bishton Hall, near Stafford, who remembered wily Wilson. But I was probably the only one who’d been in No10 at Harold’s drinks parties in the 1970s. And certainly the only one who’s written a modest biography of Huddersfield’s most famous son, so I felt a proprietary interest. Alas, these prices were out of my league. The No10 silver cigarette box, listed at £250-£450, fetched £4,000. Money was piling in from more than 20 countries. A cloisonne vodka set estimated at up to £300 went for treble that. Christmas cards from the Queen Sons Giles and Robin and Prince Philip, Charles and Diana, and Margaret Thatcher fetched amazing prices.
This was a man who never threw anything away: a centenary bottle of his favourite HP Sauce, a bust of Nye Bevan, boxes of his favourite cigars, and even his 1951 election address.
Harold died in 1995, aged 79, and widow Lady Wilson died in June last year, aged
102. So valuer Jim Spencer was called to the family flat in London and the Scillies holiday cottage. “Seven vanloads were waiting, a huge part of our collective history – the wheels and cogs and nuts and bolts of the Wilson story.”
Some nuts. Some bolts. Gold necklaces, diamond rings, even Harold’s OBE. A silver tray inscribed with autographs of our 1966 World Cup winners: asking price £450-£550, made £3,200.
“It’s a thrill to handle this sale,” celebrity auctioneer Charles Hanson – of Flog It! –told me.
Harold’s sons Robin, a maths professor, and Giles, a one-time train driver, were watching. “Going better than expected,” said Robin. The estimate for the auction, all proceeds going to the family estate, was £65,000 but the outcome was more than double.
The piece de resistance was that iconic Gannex mac. Kagan invented the waterproof fabric and Harold was a walking advert.
Harold’s old shoes came cheaper in a job lot, only worth mentioning to recall the Tory taunt: that if he went barefoot to school as a boy, it was because he was too big for his boots. Parliamentary rhetoric being at a low ebb, you can’t buy that kind of jibe these days. Not even in saleroom. the