Chappell's letters sale disappoints Bradman Foundation

Greg Buckle

The late Don Bradman's son John and the Bradman Foundation appealed on Monday for people to stop profiting from the sale of Bradman's letters.

Christie's will auction five letters from Bradman to another former Australian captain, Greg Chappell, on Tuesday night in Melbourne.

"He (Chappell) is exercising his private right. We do express a level of disappointment that some of these letters were meant to remain between Greg Chappell and Sir Donald Bradman," Bradman Foundation director Richard Mulvaney told Reuters on Monday.

Two of the Bradman letters written to Chappell are expected to sell for a total of US$5,000 on Tuesday and Mulvaney said he feared the buyer may look to publish the contents for profit.

"There is a lot of interest, judging by the approaches to me, from people who want to profit from letters," John Bradman was quoted as saying by the Adelaide Advertiser on Monday.

"There is nothing I can do to stop people from selling them but I can decide who can publish their contents.

"Where people have been sent personal letters, he would not want people to use them for commercial purposes.

"He would be unhappy at the thought that people would sell letters and similarly unhappy that people would seek to profit from their contents."

PUBLISH EXTRACTS
Mulvaney said Christie's did not seek permission to publish Bradman letter extracts in the auction catalogue.

"I've accepted the explanation from Christie's to it (the extract publication), they were not aware they were in breach of copyright," Mulvaney said.

"We have prepared a statement for them which we believe they will read out at the auction."

Mulvaney said if Bradman knew people would seek to sell their letters from him, he would not have written them.

"He wrote back daily and we're just asking people to respect that and that they do not try to profiteer from that," Mulvaney said.

"We want to make it quite clear to the purchaser that they cannot reproduce the contents.

"We feel the Australian public is largely ignorant of the Copyright Act."

Bradman, considered the greatest batsman to have played the game of cricket, died aged 92 in Adelaide, South Australia in February this year.

Christie's spokesman Michael Ludgrove was unavailable for comment but told Australian Associated Press it was acceptable to sell letters between two Australian captains because the copyright stayed with the Bradman Foundation.

Mail Cricket Editor