A HUGE collection of rare books, maps, prints and other historical items amassed on Skye over the past 35 years will be up for auction by Thomson Roddick on Wednesday in the hope it will help educate people about Scottish history.

Dr George Kozikowski, a microbiologist, archaeologist and member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, was especially interested in the history of the Highlands, including the Jacobites, the Clearances, St Kilda and Staffa.

He also had one of the only collections about the ill-fated Darien Scheme to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Darien, now Panama.

Kozikowski was born in London in 1953 to Polish parents who had been displaced during the Second World War.

He died at Christmas and his daughter, Katyana Ranicar, told The National the family had taken the decision to sell his vast collection largely because of lack of space for it.

“He always had an interest in history and nature and started collecting from a young age, stamps, comics from his local comic store, coins etc – all of which he still had squirrelled away amongst his collection,” she said.

“When I was six and my brother was one, we moved to Skye to a historical house called Orbost House. It was here his collecting really took off as he had the room to display it.”

She said her father loved poetry and had a collection of signed books by Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes amongst the auction items. There is also a very rare book by William Timlin, The Ship that Sailed to Mars, of which only 2000 copies were printed, and a painting by the author called Across the Marsh.

Ranicar added: “We would love to keep it all together, but it obviously makes more sense for it to be spread amongst people that can use it, and educate people with it. Some of these items haven’t come up for sale in decades and probably won’t again.”