The Duke of Wellington, Kidnapped!: The Incredible True Story of the Art Heist That Shocked a Nation

by Alan Hirsch, Noah Charney (Introduction)

Overview

In 1961, a thief broke into the National Gallery in London and committed the most sensational art heist in British history. He stole the museum's much prized painting, The Duke of Wellington by Francisco Goya. Despite unprecedented international attention and an unflagging investigation, the case was not solved for four years, and even then, only because the culprit came forward voluntarily.



Kempton Bunton, an elderly gentleman, claimed he executed the theft armed with only a toy gun, a disguise purchased for five shillings, and a getaway car inadvertently provided by a drunkard. Shortly after turning himself in, Bunton also invoked language in an obscure law to maintain his innocence, despite the confession. He did not allege that the confession was false, but rather that stealing the painting did not constitute a crime because he intended to return it. On account of this improbable defense strategy, the story took another twist, resulting in a bizarre courtroom drama and extraordinary verdict.



Over fifty years later, Alan Hirsch decided to explore the facts behind this historic case and uncovered shocking new evidence that both solved the crime and deepened the mystery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619025912
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Alan Hirsch, a writer and Chair of the Justice and Law Studies Program at Williams College, received a J.D. from Yale Law School and an M.A. from Williams College in the History of Art. He moonlights as a trial consultant and expert witness on police interrogations and false confessions across the nation. In addition to numerous works of legal scholarship, Alan has written Talking Heads: Political Talk Shows and Their Star Pundits (St. Martin's, 1991) and is the co–author with Akhil Amar of For the People: What the Constitution Really Says About Your Rights (Free Press, 1998) and. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, Newsday, and the Village Voice. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

02/22/2016
This colorful true-crime story makes a zany whodunit out of an art heist that stunned England’s National Gallery in London more than 50 years ago. In late August of 1961, the Duke of Wellington by Spanish painter Francisco Goya, a national treasure purchased months earlier for £140,000, disappeared from the museum. Over the next four years, the thief tried unsuccessfully to ransom the return of the painting through letters sent to Reuters and other news outlets. Two months after the painting was returned unharmed in 1965, Kempton Bunton, a 61-year-old gadabout, confessed to the crime, claiming as his motive that he had hoped the ransom could help pay for license fees that the government charged old-age pensioners to watch television. The trial that followed was a farrago of contradictory claims by the plaintiff and missed opportunities for the prosecution that ended with Bunton escaping sentencing on the grounds that he had always intended to return the purloined portrait (although he did serve time for the destruction of its frame). Hirsch writes his debut book’s opening chapters like a finely tuned suspense thriller, alternating chapters of biography about the irascible and very unreliable Bunton and the authorities’ investigation of the crime and its clues. His description of Bunton’s amusing trial is the stuff of an Ealing Studios comic crime caper. The book’s surprise ending perfectly caps this story of the unlikely art thief who made sport of his nation’s criminal justice system. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"As fun as it is improbable, The Duke of Wellington, Kidnapped! tells the story of a real-life heist too strange to be made up. Hirsch manages to solve one of the great art thefts of the twentieth century and, at the same time, to deepen its mystery.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Sixth Extinction

From the Publisher

2016-01-19
Who was the clever thief who snatched Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London in 1961? He was well-read, if not learned, too clever by half, and clearly talented in the burglar's arts. Hirsch (Chair, Justice and Law Studies Program/Williams Coll.) felt the deed and the perpetrator needed further investigation. The man who confessed, Kempton Bunton, was an elderly, unpublished author who had a difficult time maintaining any sort of employment. The author explores a host of questions that had puzzled London police, as well as some that didn't occur to them. Why did the theft take place on Aug. 22, 1961, exactly 50 years after the Mona Lisa went missing from the Louvre? How could an older, overweight man possibly have entered the museum through a lavatory window after scaling walls topped with barbed wire? Why did he say he got in between 4 and 5 a.m. when the loss was first noticed at 10 p.m.? This story has all the potential of a great mystery and a thrilling crime story. Hirsch was the first to get his hands on an autobiography Bunton wrote just a few years after the fact, in which he explained how he stole the painting, stored it, wrote a series of letters trying to collect ransom, and eventually returned it. He turned himself in, claiming that, as he had no criminal intent and no intention of permanently keeping the painting, he could not be found guilty. Unfortunately, here the author's legal side takes over the narrative. The details of the investigation, the trial with interminable prosecutorial repetition of questions, examining every aspect over and over, and the judge's clear disbelief take a fun tale and drag it out. The author may have solved the case in the end, but by that time, interest is pretty well lost. A great subject overwhelmed by legal minutiae.

Kirkus Reviews