A fraudster who sold books with forged signatures of some of Britain’s most famous people from his Hampshire home has been ordered to pay back more than £33,000 of his ill-gotten gains.

Allan Formhals will have to sell his home in Carrington Lane, Milford-on-Sea, in order to pay back for the “criminal lifestyle” he led while selling books containing the forged signatures of the likes of Sir Winston Churchill, Elizabeth I and Oliver Cromwell, a court heard.

In 2012, Formhals was sentenced to ten months in prison after a jury at Southampton Crown Court found him guilty of 10 counts of fraud.

At a confiscation hearing yesterday, Judge Peter Henry ordered the 68-year-old to pay the cash saying “the property is going to have to be sold”. The court heard that Formhals had spent nearly nine months living off his criminal activity before he was caught with cash going to accounts in his name.

Judge Henry said: “I do find that Formhals had a criminal lifestyle and that he had benefitted from that criminal lifestyle of the total sum set out be the prosecution in their statement, namely £33,384.49.”

In 2012, Formhals denied 15 charges of fraud from 2009 to 2011 but was found guilty of ten counts, acquitted of two and the jury could not decide on a further three charges.

Two of the charges he was convicted of included being in possession of articles for the use in fraud which included forged autographs of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien and other notable figures from history and literature.

Formhals convinced Churchill enthusiast Kim Taylor-Smith that books formerly owned by Squadron Leader Neville Duke, a Second World War Spitfire ace and a friend of the British Prime Minister, contained his signature.

Another victim, Corinna Honan, bought signed books from Formhals with autographs by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.

More than £6,430 of the total will be divided among the victims of his crimes.

Formhals, who has another property in Keyhaven Road, Milford-on-Sea, has six months to pay up or could find himself with a 15-month jail sentence if he defaults on the payment.