Treat yourself to a mantique

“OH, JOY!” as my long-expired housemaster would have once exclaimed. All these wonderful things I’ve been encouraging you to buy each month – serious stuff for sushiing, pulping and piercing the enemy; quality kit to knock down or haul up our quarry; fine items to delight us as we eat and drink and remember the sport we had, or survived – now have an official classification: ‘Mantiques’. A recent article in a trade magazine explained how auction houses are finding new buyers by grouping their sales into such tantalising sounding offerings as The Gentleman’s Library sale, The Grand Tour or, a particular, pretentious favourite of mine, Noble Collections, by mixing our type of kit alongside the more delicate type of antiques most memsahibs tend to hanker after. All power to these auction house style setters say I if they can help convince our own long-haired interrogators that a superfine sword, gun or bit of taxidermy will complement some fine Regency glass or