PHOTOGRAPHS, film memorabilia and artwork from one of the most glittering careers in film have netted almost £780,000 at auction.

More than 460 items from the family archive of legendary film actor and director Lord Richard Attenborough have been sold at auction at Bonhams this week.

Among the items sold include a replica amber topped cane containing a prehistoric mosquito from Jurassic Park sold £13,750 – around three times the estimate.

A wooden clapperboard from his 1982 epic Gandhi, for which Lord Attenborough won an Oscar, sold for £15,000 – five times the estimate.

The highest selling lots were an original 1921 poster for Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid which sold for £37,500 while a second Chaplin poster for A Dog’s Life sold for £32,500.

His family sold part of his archive because of a lack of room to store all the items he collected and saved from an astonishing 65 years at the peak of filmmaking.

The rest of the archive has arrived at the University of Sussex with staff starting out on the painstaking practice of sorting through the material in preparation for it being made publicly available.

Lord Attenborough, who died in August last year, holds a special affinity with Sussex thanks to his distinguished decade-long spell as the University of Sussex chancellor, his chilling portrayal of Pinkie in the 1947 rendition of Brighton Rock and his directorial debut Oh! What a Lovely War which was filmed in and around Brighton.

A set design for Brighton Rock featuring the Palace Pier sold for £2,500 and a group of publicity stills from the 1947 film including a young Lord Attenborough with a cut face achieved £1,500 at auction.

A rare poster, with the film’s original title The Worst Sin, sold for £2,000, while an early theatre script signed by Lord Attenborough sold for £1,875.

The auction started at 10am on Wednesday and ended at 5.30pm with no break and two auctioneers taking turns with the gavel because of the high level of interest in the lots from both UK and international bidders.

A Bonhams spokeswoman said: “The impressive total and the fierce bidding on many lot is a tribute to the affection and respect in which Lord Attenborough was held by people in Britain and around the world and it was a pleasure to have been entrusted with this sale.”