O. F. Snelling

Oswald Frederick Snelling, auctioneer's clerk and writer: born London 30 December 1916; three times married; died London 6 November 2001.

A famous print of a Sotheby's book sale at the turn of the 20th century shows the auctioneer in his rostrum, hammer raised, watching Bernard Quaritch at the long table, scything his way through lot after lot. Other booksellers sit beside him; a few toffs, private collectors recognisable by their tall hats, are slightly detached, piles of books negligently balanced beside them. This scene, long forgotten in New Bond Street, was re-enacted at Hodgson's Rooms in Chancery Lane every time there was a book sale (and Hodgson's sold nothing else) from 1861 until 1981, when the firm, by then a subsidiary of Sotheby's, closed its doors, and a figure (invisible in the print) snapped his big ledger shut for the last time.

That figure was the auctioneer's clerk, and at Hodgson's, from the end of 1949 to the day it closed, it was O. F. Snelling. The auctioneer's clerk was a person of great importance, arguably more so than the auctioneer, an aloof figure conducting the performance with hammer rather than baton and whose authority resided in a certain detachment. The clerk was in the thick of it – whether advising the ignorant during viewings or organising complicated bids for the professionals, juggling commissions, recording bids or totting bills and arranging clearance slips. Fred Snelling enjoyed the repartee, his voice with its twang of north London rising above the rest; he saw the scene, the scrubbed boards, equally scrubbed table and benches, the deal shelves reaching perilously high on each side of the rooms, contrasting with the solid mahogany of the rostrum, as a sort of arena.

Long before he came to books he had grown familiar with another arena, the boxing ring. He must have seen every fight worth seeing from 1930 to the day he died, even if latterly it was on the television, rather than at the ringside where he was happiest. Over 70 years he developed, as the blurb of his A Bedside Book of Boxing (1972) put it, "an encyclopaedic knowledge of pugilistic history".

Oswald Frederick Snelling was born in 1916 and, after Edmonton Latymer and the Hornsey School of Art, set out first on a career as a commercial artist. He drew cartoons and posters and illustrated books, among them posters for Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova's ballets and the illustrations for a book by George Hackenschmidt, "the Russian Lion", the former world champion wrestler and strongman who became a philosopher.

Cartoons became the entry to journalism, and Snelling tried his luck with all the sporting journals. One article that he sent in to The Ring in America won him a prize, a signed and dedicated copy of Nat Fleischer's biography of Jack Dempsey. His break came when Everybody's employed Colonel Dudley Lister, a former ABA heavyweight champion, as sports editor. He needed a good staff writer on boxing and Snelling got the job.

War was looming, and Snelling spent the next seven years from 1939 to 1946 in uniform in Civil Defence and the Army, although he continued to write. Returning to the world of freelance journalism, he wrote book reviews, film criticism and sporting articles for magazines such as The Leader and Band Wagon. He ghosted articles for sports personalities, and wrote three books under the pen-name "Oswald Frederick", a quiz book, Fight Quiz (1946), and two biographies, Battling Bruce: the story of the fighting career and the rise to fame of Bruce Woodcock (1946) and White Hope: the story of the Jack Johnson era (1947), the last still considered a classic, although the publisher went bankrupt and Snelling got not a penny from it. It was to meet an immediate need that he looked in at Hodgson's towards the end of 1949, applied for and got the job of clerk. He took it as a stop-gap, but stayed for over 30 years.

The relationship that he developed with the impressive but kindly figure of Sidney Hodgson in the rostrum (succeeded later by his son Wilfred) was a classic performance, not unlike that of Captain Mainwaring and Sergeant Wilson. At once natural and theatrical, it was as good as any play. Neither of them stood any nonsense from the floor, although a certain amount of back-chat was permissible. After the sale, Mr Hodgson would withdraw, leaving Snelling to deal with the throng. He got to know all the main figures in the trade, with a special feeling for its humbler or more eccentric members.

In his spare time he continued to write a regular monthly article for Everybody's until it ceased publication, and in 1964 produced Double O Seven: James Bond, a report, the first whole book on Ian Fleming's by now famous hero. It went on to sell over a million copies in one edition or another; Fleming himself being among its appreciative readers. Snelling was able to take time off and travel in America, Africa and Jamaica, his new wife's home.

Next year came a real-life spy story. Snelling had earlier got to know Peter and Helen Kroger, who, under the guise of booksellers (which they genuinely were), assisted Gordon Lonsdale, the Russian spy. Snelling visited him, and acquired books to help him write while in prison. In 1965 he made the hazardous journey to Russia to meet him again and negotiate the writing and publication of his memoirs, Spy.

In 1972 came the book Snelling was proudest of, The Bedside Book of Boxing (later The Ringside Book of Boxing). This arose from a regular series of articles for Boxing News, and in 1980 he turned his experience in the book trade to equally good effect, writing articles for the Antiquarian Book Monthly Review which in turn became another book, Rare Books and Rarer People: some personal reminiscences of "the trade" (1982). Snelling had a good ear for the telling anecdote.

Hodgson's was bought up (and ultimately closed) by Sotheby's. "115 at Hodgsons" is now a Chancery Lane restaurant and wine bar. After he retired, despite, or perhaps on account of, the number of people he had met Snelling was not much inclined to keep up with all the people he knew in the trade, although he retained his closer friends. One of them was Derek O'Dell, with whom he joined the Croydon Ex-Boxers' Association. As a result, he was asked to produce their journal, Southern Ex-Boxer. This was the ideal outlet for his energies in retirement, and he kept it up almost to the day he died.

Once someone asked Patch, his grander counterpart at Sotheby's, why he didn't write his memoirs, adding, "You could make a fortune." Patch replied, "I'd make more by keeping my mouth shut." Fred Snelling, a straightforward man, had few secrets and no such scruples.

Nicolas Barker