A painting of water lilies by French impressionist Claude Monet is expected to fetch up to 40 million pounds when it is auctioned off in London.

The painting, will star among dozens of modern masterpieces this month in what is being billed as the most valuable art auction ever held in the city.

Painted in 1906, the work is part of the French Impressionist’s iconic Nympheas series and was included in his historic exhibition in Paris three years later.

A huge collection of diaries, letters and even a pristine cigar belonging to Winston Churchill was up for auction in London Wednesday.

The sale, which is expected to raise around one million pounds, is being billed by Christie’s as part of the most important private Churchill collection in the world.

It features his engagement diary for 1939 to 1945 which records meetings with leaders including US President Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin of Russia and Britain’s King George VI. It could fetch up to 120,000 pounds.

A 1932 Pablo Picasso painting of his mistress has sold for $106.5 million, a world record price for any work of art at auction.

“Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” which had a pre-sale estimate of between $70 million and $90 million, was sold at Christie’s auction house on Tuesday evening to an unidentified telephone bidder.

The Spanish master’s painting eclipses the record set in February, when Alberto Giacometti’s “Walking Man I” sculpture sold in London for 104.3 million.

In a bold recognition of the world’s fastest-growing auction market, Sotheby’s recently hoisted China‘s flag at the most conspicuous spot outside its New York headquarters.

The flag now flies between those of the US, UK, France, and Switzerland, where the auction house has established its core client base.

“We proposed it. To my great surprise, not only was the Chinese flag hoisted, it was hoisted in the middle,” Kevin Ching, chief executive officer of Sotheby’s in Asia, told AFP.

Hong Kong has become the world’s third largest auction hub after New York and London, thanks to the rising political and economic prowess of China.

A Palm Beach billionaire has uncorked a suit charging Christie’s auction house is in cahoots with counterfeit wine sellers.

William Koch is still steaming about four bottles of wine supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson that he bought for more than $300,000, which allegedly turned out to be fakes.

He’s already sued the seller – and now he’s trained his sights on the auction house, claiming it knew the Bordeaux was bogus.

A Picasso painting owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Art Foundation, which was at the centre of a dispute about its Nazi-era history, is to go under the hammer.

Lloyd Webber — composer of musicals like “Cats” — originally announced his intention to sell “Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto” for charity in 2006.

It was later withdrawn from auction after a claim that a previous owner, German-Jewish banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, had sold it under duress from the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s.

But von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s descendants reached an out-of-court settlement in the US in January with the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, which is selling the picture, allowing it to retain ownership.