A Roman Marble Torso of a Pugilist, circa 2nd Century A.D.

Sidney James Edwards (1919-2005), Chessington, Surrey, and Southampton, collected in the 1940s
by descent to the present owners

For other representations of the cestus, a Roman boxing glove composed of layered hardened leather thongs secured to the knuckles and leather straps tied around the hand and forearm, sometimes as high as the elbow, see William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London, 1875, p. 269. Also see the famous bronze statue of a seated boxer in the Museo Nazionale delle Terme, Rome, inv. 1055 (J.J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age, fig. 157; Stewart, Greek Sculpture, fig. 814).

Sidney Edwards  attended The Borough Polytechnic Institute in London between 1935 and 1938, and later worked as a commercial artist. During World War II he served in the Army as a Panorama field sketching clerk, specialising in map drawing, in North Africa and Italy. He was also a member of the Italy Star Association, 1943-1945. During this period he met and befriended Spike Milligan who mentions him in his war memoirs Where have all the bullets gone?, London, 1985. Upon his discharge from the Army, Sidney Edwards worked for the Ordinance Survey as a cartographer.