Each separate lot was marked with a slip, groups of books not worth separate lotting were bundled up (the place was full of huge balls of twine), and then the porters set them out on the shelves, ready for the little drama of the auction. This demanded the keen attention of the auctioneer and his clerk, the one conducting the auction and knocking down each lot, the other recording buyer and price in the marked copy of the catalogue.The young Hodgson had become familiar with this routine when in 1939 war supervened, and for six years he was away, serving in the Royal Army Service Corps, first in England, then in East Africa, before returning to Chancery Lane He was made a partner in the firm in 1947. Gradually, Sidney Hodgson relinquished the direction to his son, who remained in sole charge for the last decade of the firm’s existence. In 1968 it ceased independent trading and was absorbed by Sotheby’s, who maintained it as an independent saleroom, with Wilfrid Hodgson in the rostrum, until 1981, when he retired. The business was then transferred to Sotheby’s then new Aeolian Hall rooms.Even before the Second World War, another important event had taken place, in a family tradition as long as the business. In 1936, at the age of 21, Wilfrid Hodgson was admitted to the Livery of the Stationers’ Company. He was called to the Court in 1970, achieving a unique (and now never to be repeated) distinction in serving on the Court together with his father.

He was Master of the company in 1979-80, and was responsible for clothing his sister Margaret by patrimony, one of the first women to be admitted to the Livery.In another family tradition, he became a life member of the Bibliographical Society, attending its meetings punctually and leaving it a handsome legacy in his will. With his father he arranged for the transfer of the firm’s complete set of marked catalogues to the British Museum (now British Library) in 1968, where they joined the similar series of Sotheby and Puttick & Simpson catalogues, an invaluable resource for book-trade history.Hodgson was, besides, more than an amateur photographer, an enthusiastic bicyclist, and a collector of all that his bicycle journeys produced, from photographs to railway tickets. He was a long-serving and devoted member of the Bromley Cricket, Tennis and Hockey Clubs, of which he was the all but official photographer.He is fondly remembered as the best of uncles. There is an early snap of the entire family, Wilfrid included, carefully labelled by him “The first photograph taken by me with a string”.Nicolas Barker. Anthony Benjamin, painter, printmaker, sculptor and teacher: born Boarhunt, Hampshire 29 March 1931; married (two sons); died London 17 February 2002.

Essentially an abstract painter, Benjamin extended his natural flair for bright, even fluorescent, colour into constructed “sculptures” using perspex and fibreglass. A lifelong interest in print-making became a predominant feature of his late work, some of which was inspired by the writings of admired poets like W.S. Graham, whom he knew while living near St Ives in Cornwall during the late 1950s.Benjamin was born in Hampshire in 1931. Post-war engineering studies at Southall Technical College equipped him with a technical nous that encouraged later experimentation. He was ambitious and serious-minded from the outset; aged just 20 he studied drawing in Fernand L?r’s Paris studio He returned to Paris in 1958, studying in S.W Hayter’s Atelier 17 print workshop. In London – where he studied between 1950 and 1954 at the Regent Street Polytechnic – Benjamin impressed the painting tutor Norman Blamey less on artistic than on personal grounds.His easy charm and unassuming manner hid a tough pugilist background. He literally fought his way into art school, which he financed with money earned as a flyweight professional boxer.