A paragraph scrawled on a piece of hotel stationery by a young British civil servant in July 1917 will be sold next month by Sotheby's for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But its value goes far beyond money, as Donald Macintyre explains
26 May 2005
The term "living history" is a cliché that slips as easily from the lips of museum curators as it does from the makers of documentary films.
But it may actually help to explain why a single paragraph of roughly abbreviated handwriting scrawled on a piece of a Bloomsbury hotel's stationery by a young British civil servant in the summer of 1917 should attract such attention ­ and such a price-tag. It is easily the most valuable item in a batch of papers estimated by Sotheby's to be worth between $500,000 (£273,000) and $800,000 when it goes on sale at its New York auction house next month.

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