Keith Vaughan

[5] Born at Selsey in West Sussex, Vaughan attended Christ's Hospital school.

He worked in an advertising agency until World War II, when as an intending conscientious objector he joined the St. John Ambulance; in 1941 he was conscripted into the Non-Combatant Corps.

During the war Vaughan formed friendships with the painters Graham Sutherland and John Minton, with whom after demobilisation in 1946 he shared premises.

He was diagnosed with cancer in 1975 and died by suicide in 1977 in London, recording his last moments in his diary as the drugs overdose took effect.

[7] His auction record of £313,250 was set at Sotheby's, London, on 11 November 2009, for the oil on canvas Theseus and the Minotaur, previously in the collection of Richard Attenborough[8] (who bought it in 1967).