As a result, sitting over
tea on a rainy afternoon in Mayfair, Ms. Newman — who has been with Sotheby's for 28 years — sounded undaunted by the political turmoil and Europe's depressed currency, which has convulsed London.
In 2006 he told Butt magazine: «I liked the smell of English homes and bathrooms, the mix of a damp carpet and apricot scented potpourri... Marmite, the repressed but omnipresent sexuality, weak milky
tea on a rainy afternoon by the sea, the spongy bread — basically all the things people don't like, and what one would see as signs of how pathetic and backwards England was, or is, I liked.»