One of my favourite news stories of the past week concerned the discovery, after 128 years, of the remains of a grasshopper, which had been trapped in the paint of Vincent Van Gogh’s 1889 picture Olive Trees.

Rather like those gorgeous pieces of amber you occasionally see at auction, which trapped unrecognisable insects sometimes hundreds of millions of years ago as tree sap before fossilising, the discovery creates a seemingly direct link to a specific moment in time, compressing the years in between so that you can almost see and hear Vincent slapping the paint onto the canvas.

These direct connections are what many people look for when buying things at auction and explain the huge price differences between artworks described in the catalogue as ‘follower of’ (someone unidentified working in the style of a well-known artist at around the same time), ‘school of’ (a work of the time in the style of the artist), ‘studio of’ (a work from the artist’s studio or closely associated with them), ‘attributed to’ (probably, but not certainly, by the artist) and ‘autograph work’ (categorically by the artist).

In the art world, there is nothing quite like being close enough to touch the hand of the creator.

I find it extraordinary that so few people outside of the art world have ever heard of CRW Nevinson. Who? I hear you ask: quite simply one of the most accomplished of war artists, whose mechanistic paintings of troops marching to the frontline and etchings conveying the desolation of the trenches are unequalled, to my mind.

As an early exponent of Vorticism, Nevinson’s take on what an exploding shell looked like still has the impact today that it had when first unveiled during the First World War. His depiction of a dead child lying face down in a bomb blasted street is arguably the most moving artistic image to have emerged from the conflict.

Nevinson was also reputedly the first artist to paint the view of the ground from an aeroplane. That he went on to create some of the most memorable images of New York in 1919 and beyond – see his etching ‘Looking through the Brooklyn Bridge’ for starters – is testament that here was no one-hit wonder.

Now A Dawn from 1914, one his oil paintings, is set to come to auction on November 21 with expectations of up to £1m or more. Look it up and then feast your eyes on more works by Nevinson. His was a rare talent indeed.

Few watches are as iconic as the Rolex Daytona – think at least £10,000, with prices rising to hundreds of thousands of pounds for the most coveted of all, a Paul Newman Daytona, a series of limited edition watches made as a tribute to the Hollywood Great, whose association with the brand stretches back decades. So what made competing bidders fight it out to $18 million (£13.6 million) for a Daytona in New York on October 26?

In short, the personal touch. This was the watch that Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward, bought for him in 1969, during filming for Winning, in which he played an obsessive racing driver with Woodward as his onscreen wife.

The film gave Newman a taste for racing and he went on to take part in the Le Mans 24-hour race.

Newman had been injured in a motorcycle accident four years earlier and so Woodward had had the stainless steel watch inscribed Drive Carefully, Me.

When she bought him another new watch in 1984, Newman handed the Daytona Rolex to his daughter’s then boyfriend, who put it up for sale last month, with some of the proceeds heading for the Nell Newman Foundation, set up by Neman’s daughter.

A Hollywood idol, admired by men and loved by women; association with an iconic 1960s film linked to motor racing; a gift from a famous actress to her even more famous husband; and finally, an iconic brand in itself.

Auction consignments like this are once in a lifetime.

More than 400 years on, we still burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes on our November 5 bonfires as we remember the Catholic plot to blow up King James I and parliament.

The plot nearly succeeded after a tip-off, which led to the discovery of Fawkes himself in parliament’s cellars, did not result in the conspirator’s arrest as he convinced the authorities that he was simply laying in firewood for the winter. It was only on the second search that he was caught making his final preparations.

Had the 36 barrels of gunpowder exploded in such a confined space, there is little doubt that they would have flattened not just parliament, but a significant area around it, with huge loss of life.

Around three years ago the earliest known written account of what happened came up for auction in London with an estimate of £40,000-60,000. Written by Secretary of State Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, just four days after the plot was uncovered, the letter to Sir Ralph Winwood, the English ambassador at The Hague, includes a full account of the events. From this we can see how shocking and daring it all seemed at the time, and how that ensured a notoriety that would last throughout ensuing history.