Audrey Hepburn's family opens up her attic for auction

Film scripts, dresses and other treasures from late film legend Audrey Hepburn's Swiss attic are going up for sale in London at an auction that offers a remarkable insight into her personal world.

"My mother kept it in the attic, quite literally," Hepburn's son Luca Dotti told AFP at a viewing of the more than 500 lots at Christie's auction house ahead of the sale next week.

"My mother was not a collector but she kept every little bits and pieces for sentimental reasons".

An array of luggage being sold off includes a battered black-lacquered suitcase she is believed to have arrived in London with to take up a ballet scholarship in 1948, before she became one of the world's most famous actresses.

The working script for the 1961 film "Breakfast at Tiffany's", including deleted scenes, is another rarity being sold along with numerous other scripts featuring Hepburn's hand-written notes.

Glamorous dresses by designers including Givenchy and Valentino -- which her son Sean Hepburn-Ferrer noted few would fit into -- have been put on display alongside playful clothing including a 1964 Spanish matador outfit.

The sale also includes her American cine camera, pointing to the actress's interest in also documenting life from the other side of the camera.

Adrian Hume-Sayer, Christie's director of private collections, said the sale was "pretty extensive".

"There's lots of little personal things," he said, pointing to the telephones from her house in Switzerland and a make-up case monogrammed with her initials.

He said the "backbone" of the sale was the annotated film scripts, adding that the collection as a whole had been carefully put together to "tell a story".