London - A 15th century first edition of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - the first major book printed in England - was sold last night for a record £4.6 million at Christie's in London.
The book, bound in red leather, set a new price record for any printed book after competitive bidding. It had been estimated to fetch only between £500,000 and £700,000.
Just around a dozen copies of the first edition - printed in 1477 by William Caxton - still exist, and this was the last version in private hands.