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A string instrument previously belonging to the famous scientist has fetched £860k in a bidding event.

That Zunterer violin from 1894 is believed to have been the scientist's initial instrument and had been initially expected to fetch around £300,000 as it went on the block at an auction house in Gloucestershire.

A book on philosophy which Einstein gave to an acquaintance was also sold at a price of two thousand two hundred pounds.

All final bids will be subject to an additional 26.4% commission added to them, which means the overall amount for the violin will exceed £1m.

Auctioneers think that once the commission are added, the sale could be the record for a violin not formerly belonging by a professional musician or crafted by Stradivari – as the earlier record belonging to an instrument that was likely played on the Titanic.

Another bicycle seat also owned by the physicist failed to sell during the sale and could be put up again.

Each of the pieces offered for sale were given to his good friend and physicist von Laue in the latter part of 1932.

Shortly afterwards, he escaped to the US to flee the rise of antisemitism and Nazism in Germany.

The physicist gave them to a friend and Einstein fan, Margarete two decades later, and it was her great-great granddaughter who recently offered them for auction.

Another violin once owned by the physicist, which was gifted to him as he came in the United States in the year 1933, was sold during a bidding event for over $500,000 (£370k) in New York back in 2018.