Mick Jagger’s handwritten love letters to his former lover Marsha Hunt will go on the auction in London next month.
Marsha Hunt is an American-born singer who was the inspiration for Rolling Stones’ 1971 classic Brown Sugar and bore Mick Jagger’s first child, Karis.
Sotheby’s said Saturday that Marsha Hunt has tasked the auction house with selling 10 letters written from the set of Tony Richardson’s film Ned Kelly starring Mick Jagger, which was shooting in Australia.
Marsha Hunt, 66, said she decided to put the private correspondence under the hammer because she is “broke” and unable to pay her bills or make repairs to her home, according to ABC News.
“Someone, I hope, will buy those letters, as our generation is dying,” she said.
“And with us will go the reality of who we were and what life was.”
The singer, who lives in France, went on to say that the letters chronicling their “delicate love affair” that was kept secret until 1972 touch on subjects such as the first moon landing and John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
“When a serious historian finally examines how and why Britain’s boy bands affected international culture and politics, this well-preserved collection of Mick Jagger’s hand written letters will be a revelation,” Marsha Hunt said in a statement distributed by the auction house.
Marsha Hunt is an American-born singer who was the inspiration for Rolling Stones’ 1971 classic Brown Sugar and bore Mick Jagger’s first child, Karis
When asked by reporters if Mick Jagger agreed to having his letters sold off, Marsha Hunt said she didn’t think so, but added that the correspondence did not belong to him.
“This is Mick in his own words…This is part of English history, it is part of rock history, part of cultural history and it corrects all the misinformation,” she said, according to Rolling Stone.
Sotheby’s books specialist Gabriel Heaton said the letters sent in the summer of 1969 show a “poetic and self-aware” 25-year-old Mick Jagger, who wrote about the works of Emily Dickinson and meeting the author Christopher Isherwood.
In his letters, the rock star also touches upon the unraveling of his relationship with singer Marianne Faithful, whom he was also dating at the time, and the death of Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones.
“They provide a rare glimpse of Jagger that is very different from his public persona: passionate but self-contained, lyrical but with a strong sense of irony,” Gabriel Heaton said.
Sotheby’s said the collection, which includes song lyrics and a Rolling Stones playlist, is expected to fetch between $111,300 and $159,000 and will go under the hammer on December 12.
Vatican judges have refused to admit key evidence in the trial of Paolo Gabriele, Pope Benedict’s former butler, charged with stealing sensitive documents.
Paolo Gabriele’s lawyers had asked to include evidence gathered by cardinals who carried out an inquiry into the “Vatileaks” scandal for Pope Benedict.
But judges at the high-profile trial said they would rely only on evidence from the Vatican police and prosecutor.
They adjourned the case until Tuesday, when Paolo Gabriele will be questioned.
The 46-year-old admitted to investigators that he had leaked confidential documents to expose “evil and corruption”.
He was identified as the source of leaked documents that were published in a book by an Italian journalist in May.
The documents included private correspondence between senior Vatican figures, and appeared to reveal bitter power struggles and corruption.
Pope Benedict XVI ordered cardinals to carry out an inquiry separate to the probe by Vatican police after the scandal broke.
The results of their investigation have not been made public.
Paolo Gabriele faces up to four years in prison if convicted of aggravated theft, but he could be pardoned by the Pope.
The court decided that his fellow defendant, Vatican computer technician Claudio Sciarpelletti, will be tried separately for aiding and abetting a crime. He had exerted his right to stay away from the hearing.
Paolo Gabriele was the Pope’s trusted servant for years and held the keys to the papal apartments.
It has been one of the most difficult crises of Pope Benedict’s seven-year papacy.
No TV cameras or recorders are being allowed inside the courtroom for the most high-profile case to be held in the Vatican since it was established as a sovereign state in 1929.
Paolo Gabriele, dressed in a pale grey suit, showed little reaction as judges rejected almost all of his lawyers’ requests.
He will be interrogated in court by the president of the Vatican City tribunal on Tuesday.
The chief judge said the court hoped to reach a verdict by the end of next week.
Among witnesses due to give evidence next week is Pope Benedict’s private secretary, Georg Gaenswein, and one of the six German and Italian nuns who work in the pope’s private household.
The Vatican butler was arrested in May, accused of passing papal correspondence to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, whose book His Holiness: The secret papers of Pope Benedict XVI was published that month.
Correspondents say the revelations seem aimed primarily at discrediting the Vatican’s powerful Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who has been in his post since 2006.
Prosecutors quoted Paolo Gabriele as saying during his interrogation that he knew taking the documents was wrong but he felt the Holy Spirit was inspiring him to shed light on the problems he saw around him.
He said he felt the Pope was being kept in the dark or misinformed by his collaborators.
Pope Benedict said after his former butler’s arrest that the news had “brought sadness in my heart”.
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