Peter Wilson (auctioneer)

Peter Cecil Wilson CBE (8 March 1913 โ€“ 3 June 1984) was an English auctioneer and chairman of Sotheby's.[1][2]

Wilson's father was Sir Mathew Wilson, 4th Baronet of Eshton Hall, Gargrave, Yorkshire.[2] He was educated at Eton College and at New College, Oxford.[2] He married Helen Ballard in 1935 who he had met in Hamburg. They had two sons and she became a noted horticulturist after he became attracted to men. The marriage was dissolved in 1951 and they remained on good terms.[3]

He worked for British Intelligence during World War II, in London and Washington DC.[2] He thought about taking this up as a career but decided to return to "Sotherbys" after the war.[3]

He appeared as a castaway on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 26 September 1966.[4]

He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1970, and was made honorary life president of Sotheby's in 1980, when he stood down as chairman.[2] Wilson owned Garden Lodge at Logan Place in London's Kensington district for several years.[5]

He died in Paris in 1984, after being in a coma for a week.[2] He was 71.[2]

Wilson is mentioned in the Ian Fleming story "The Property of a Lady", commissioned by Sotheby's for use in their annual journal, The Ivory Hammer,[6] and which was adapted as the auction sequence in the film Octopussy.

References

  • WILSON, Peter Cecil, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920โ€“2016 (online edition, Oxford University Press, 2014)


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