guaranteed collection

Last week Sotheby's announced that in May it would auction the guaranteed collection of 20th-century European and American art from the estate of Lydia Winston Malbin.

The society's fourth annual black-tie dinner-debate drew a sellout crowd, not only for the caliber of the speakers - Michael Foot M.P., the erudite former leader of the British Labor Party, vs. Fay Weldon, the novelist and playwright - but for its guaranteed collection of glitterati.