The late deejay John Peel's astonishing music archives go up for auction

Some 18 years after John Peel's death, dozens of precious items from his archives are being auctioned off by Bonhams - and the catalogue is a museum exhibit in itself. Photo: AFP

For those who don't know, the late, legendary, longtime BBC Radio DJ John Peel was one of the most influential and important people in British music from the 1960s through his death in 2004.

He arose in the mid-1960s as the BBC was forced to modernise its programming, and for the next four decades, he played a vital and arguably peerless role in just about every wave of contemporary music, from psychedelia through punk and Britpop and electronic music.