LONDON (ACNI) - When the Beatles recorded Can’t Buy Me Love, one of their early no. 1 hits, they could not have imagined that a fan would someday spend a fortune to own the signed document that launched their musical careers. The Beatles’ first contract, signing on with manager Brian Epstein in 1962, has sold online for $211,597 in an auction conducted by the Fame Bureau, a British auction company specializing in rock ’n’ roll memorabilia.

The price, inclusive of the buyer’s premium, represents the highest amount ever achieved through LiveAuctioneers by an auction house outside the United States. The historic document sold to an Internet bidder at the Fame Bureau’s auction Nov. 27.

Christie's decision to shut down lines of credit, even to its longest-standing and most trusted clients, was the main issue raised by dealers showing at the Winter Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia in London this month.

"I've had an account with Christie's for twenty-five years," said London-based specialist textiles dealer Joanna Booth, "but they never told us they were changing their policy on lines of credit. You only get this news when you come to [pay for and collect] your objects."

"I don't care about the so-called credit crunch; it's all hype anyway," said Tot Taylor, a director of London contemporary art dealers Riflemaker, at this year's Zoo art fair at London's Royal Academy of Arts. "It will have no effect on us at all."

Mr. Taylor's comment may have been fuelled by a rush of optimism after selling several pieces from his stand on the first day of the fair, which shows work by young and emerging contemporary artists. But he may have been talking too soon. Over at the Frieze Art Fair in Regent's Park - the main event in what is now the capital's busiest art week - the buzz and energy of previous years was notably lacking on the opening day. "The Americans seem to have stayed away," was the mantra echoing around the marquee.

LONDON - One of only two oil portraits of Francis Bacon (1909-1992) ever painted by Lucian Freud (b. 1922) sold today, Oct. 19, 2008, at Christie's auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art for the pounds sterling equivalent of $9,404,346. The rarely seen painting (the other was stolen from an exhibition in Berlin in 1988) offers a tangible and intimate glimpse into the inspirational friendship of two of the greatest British artists of the 20th century.

LONDON (AP) - As a 2-month-old baby, Millvina Dean was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat from the deck of the sinking RMS Titanic.

Rescued from the bitterly cold Atlantic night by the steamship Carpathia, Dean, her brother and her mother were taken to New York with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Before returning to their homeland of England, they were given a small wicker suitcase of clothing, a gift from New Yorkers, to help them rebuild their lives.

Now, more than 95 years later, Dean - the last living survivor of the disaster - is selling the suitcase and other mementos to help pay her private nursing home fees, which are not covered by Britain's National Health Service.

With all eyes on the marquee in Regents Park where the sixth annual Frieze contemporary art fair opens on Oct. 16 in an atmosphere of nervous apprehension [full report to appear soon on Auction Central News], it was easy to miss one or two other newsworthy items developing elsewhere in the capital.

Over at the recently opened SaLon Gallery in West London, work by young British contemporary artist Sarah Maple has been incurring the wrath of The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), according to UK broadsheet the Daily Telegraph.

The oil painting in question, titled Haram, shows the artist, herself a young British Muslim, wearing traditional Islamic dress and cradling a pig. According to the Daily Telegraph report, Mokhtar Badri, a spokesman for MAB, objected to the work on the grounds that Muslims are "taught to keep their distance from pigs because they are unclean". The Telegraph item said that MAB "plans to visit the SaLon Gallery to demand that it remove Maple's painting" when the exhibition opens on Oct. 16. Understandably, SaLon Gallery increased its security provision ahead of the opening.