Birds of America

Birds of America by John James Audubon is reckoned to be the world's most expensive book and is due to fetch around £6 million when it is auctioned at Sotheby's in London on December 7th.

The reference book contains 435 hand-coloured, life-size prints of 497 bird species and measures 39 by 26 inches. Only 119 copies are known to remain.

Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, hunter and painter. He travelled to the UK in 1826 where he became a minor celebrity and raised enough money to begin publishing the drawings he brought with him.