WHERE can you find England soccer legend Billy Wright, children’s author Arthur Ransome and Welsh poet Dylan Thomas all in one room?

This ecletic mix of big names from the 20th century are just a few of the subjects of books for sale at Oxfam’s book fair.

The fundraiser, one of two held every year, will be at the Wesley Memorial Hall, in New Inn Hall Street, Oxford, tomorrow.

Volunteers at the city-founded charity expect to raise about £3,000 from several thousands books collected for the sale.

All the titles come from donations to volunteers or city Oxfam shops, including the specialist bookshops in Turl Street and St Giles.

Helen O’Neill, of Oxfam’s fundraising partnership team, has helped since the fairs started in 1994.

She said: “Another organisation used to stage book sales outside Oxfam’s headquarters, which was then in Banbury Road.

“Staff got together and suggested that we should stage our own book fair and they have been going ever since.

“The Wesley Memorial Hall is a great central location that everyone can get to and we usually hold these fairs twice a year, so we will make more than £5,000 annually for the charity.

“We have a Transit van loaded with about 200 boxes full of books so there will be several thousand second-hand books for sale.

“There are some collectable books which cost quite a lot of money but we will also be selling fiction titles for £1 – there will be something for everyone.

“We started off with one event a year and for the past 10 years there have been two book fairs a year because of the demand.

“People in my reading group were discussing The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas and when they found out about the book fair they donated their copies.”

The book fair runs from 9.30am to 5pm and admission costs 50p.

Among collectable titles on sale tomorrow will be: Six Weeks in Russia by Arthur Ransome, published in 1919 (on sale for £50), Billy Wright’s Book of Soccer, featuring an article by Alf Ramsey, who went on to lead England to World Cup glory (£5), Under Milk Wood, 1954 edition in dust jacket by Dylan Thomas (£20), Egyptian Paintings, a King Penguin publication (£60), Children’s book Orlando Keeps a Dog, published in 1959 (£50), Pictures on Glass, 1972 limited edition art book by Lawrence Whistler, including a letter from the author (£75).

Oxfam is Europe’s biggest high street retailer of second-hand books, and the third largest bookseller in the UK. It sells £1.6m worth of books a month, enough to buy 50,000 emergency shelters, provide safe drinking water for 2.1 million people, or pay for 64,000 goats.

Rare books handed into shops can raise a small fortune – an early edition of Rumour at Nightfall by Graham Greene raised about £15,000 in 2008 after it was spotted at Oxfam St Giles.

And volunteers in the Harrogate shop spotted the first appearance in print of Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, featured in a Victorian annual. The volume was auctioned for £15,500.

St Giles was the charity’s first UK bookshop when it opened in 1987.

There are now a total of 130 across the country.