Sotheby's: Bidding for Class

Stimulating and entertaining, "Sotheby's "brings to life the personalities and shrewd business sense operating behind the glitz and glamour of the world's oldest and richest auction house. Reporting from within on famous sales of the recent past, and charting the impact of a succession of clever and colorful entrepreneurs who have known how to sniff out the deals of the moment, Robert Lacey brilliantly reveals how Sotheby's responds to a much greater need than that of connoisseurs buying works of art—the bidding for class.

“This is no on-your-knees, aren't they wonderful corporate biography. It's a well-researched, largely accurate, acute, sometimes very funny analysis of a company which steps from scandal and hot water into the sunlight of success every month of the year”

'' Godfrey Barker, LITERARY REVIEW' 'Written by the same old pacy, racy Lacey familiar to us from his royal books ... his talent for winkling out piquant detail is at its best' Bevis Hillier, SPECATOR '[This is] no corporate biography byt a pacy, racy book on the auction house and its characters.' ANTIQUES TRADE GAZETTE 'This is about as readable an introduction to the guiles of modern auctioneering, including its sharper practices, as you are likely to find.' ART REVIEW 'Pacy and well-reseached.' COUNTRY LIFE

Robert Lacey is an internationally renowned historian and biographer and co-founder of Cover magazine. His ground-breaking and highly-acclaimed MAJESTY - ELIZABETH II AND THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR was published in 1977 on the occasion of the Queen's Silver Jubilee.

This volume explores the history of Sotheby's auction house, tracing its beginnings back to 1744. It was in the latter half of the 19th century, when economic instability forced the aristocrats to sell off many of their treasures, that Sotheby's began to lay the foundations of the modern art market. The Sotheby's-Christie's rivalry intensified in the early-1900s and they have been battling it out ever since over the likes of Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh and Monet. Lacey takes the reader through the unprecedented boom of the 1980s, when Van Gogh's Irises went for $53.9 million, and examines the catastrophic effects of an inflation still being felt today.

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