Like many Sotheby’s recruits, he was born to privilege. But the horror of his memoir is what that privilege cost. He was the younger son of the premier baron of England, Lord Mowbray, Segrave and Stourton.

THE DAY after James Stourton left Cambridge, he started at Sotheby’s, a gofer in the British Paintings depart ment for the buccaneering Peter Wilson. He remained at the auction house for 32 years, becoming chairman of Sotheby’s UK and, with Henry Wyndham, almost as tall as he is, representing the acceptable face of New Bond Street through the difficult Alfred Taubman years. He then set up as a writer, publishing Great Houses of London (2012) and British Embassies (2017), books on collectors and collecting, a well-received life of Kenneth Clark (2016) and a fascinating history of the postwar British art market, Rogues and Scholars (2024).

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