The best-seller lists these days will always include a good number of explosive memoirs written by special forces veterans and their heroic stories usually also mean high interest at auction.

Extracted from Antiques Trade Gazette | Tom Derbyshire

Former SAS trooper Peter McAleese is selling his entire archive documenting his career with Britain’s Parachute Regiment, the SAS, Rhodesia’s SAS and the South African Defence Force.

The 77-year-old, who has also battled drug barons in Colombia, trained bodyguards in Moscow and taken on security work in Algeria and Iraq, has consigned his personal collection to Lichfield auction house Richard Winterton on March 24.

It includes his three-bar General Service Medal as part of a unique group of nine medals. The collection, which also includes berets, dog tags and other personal items, is estimated at £15,000-22,000. McAleese, who is downsizing to a flat in his adopted home of Birmingham, detailed his experiences in several books, including No Mean Soldier.

Nick Thompson, medals specialist at Richard Winterton, said: “What sets this group out from others which have come to market is the variety of medals and awards that have been issued to this man and from different countries.

“And because of the secretive nature in which the SAS is run – for all the right reasons – it’s sometimes very hard for the collector to find out the story behind the medals. But not in this case. It’s all there in the books.”