telegram

"The telegram boy said, 'I'm sorry to tell you, but this is bad news'," he says.

A telegram from King George VI was read aloud:

A telegram in the same files shows a doctor from Cornwall, who was treating a 10-year-old child in 1944, pleading with the authorities for the medicine: "No hope without penicillin".

On 13 March, "Artem" sent a telegram message from a military hospital, where he was being treated for shrapnel wounds suffered in a drone attack.

Other lots included telegrams from the late Duke of Edinburgh and letters from Margaret Thatcher and fellow comics Ronnie Barker and Tommy Cooper.