For a man who left Bromley Technical High School with just one 'O' level (in art), David Bowie ended up a remarkably well-read man.

Bowie, who died aged 69 on January 10 2016, said that "when I'm relaxed what I do is read" and described a good week as one in which he pored through "three or four books".

Bowie was witty and knowing about his own acquisitiveness for books and first editions. He paid tribute to his parents for passing on a love of literature. One of the turning points of his life was reading Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; he said that reading On The Road at 15 was an epiphanous moment, giving him the urge to get out of Bromley.

Bowie took 400 books with him to Mexico to the shoot of 1976 film The Man Who To Earth. He told Mr Showbiz in 1997: "I was dead scared of leaving them in New York, because I was knocking around with some dodgy people and I didn't want them nicking any of my books."

That set a pattern of taking a travelling library on tour and Bowie said: "I had these cabinets – it was a travelling library – and they were rather like the boxes that amplifiers get packed up in. . . because of that period, I have an extraordinarily good collection of books."