She was quite something and is worth reading more about if you’ve got an interest in radicalism (or just an idle curiosity about whatever happened to the film career of Imogen Poots) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Du... (13/13)

She was never charged but it was in the style of Rose Dugdale, an English debutante who was radicalised by the 1968 protests, visited Cuba, resigned from her job as a government economist, sold her house in Chelsea and gave the money away, and declared herself a revolutionary socialist. (12/13)

I think this is probably St Bartholomew the Great, but it could be St Bartholomew the Less, which is round the corner. They must get each other’s stolen paintings by mistake all the time. (11/13)

In the end, and having failed to solve anything at all, police act on an anonymous tip and discover the painting, wrapped in newspaper and string, in St Bartholomew’s graveyard in the City of London, a bit damp but otherwise fine. (10/13)

The Times’s response is a column by Bernard Levin, addressed to the thieves and describing how the girl’s hands are placed in the painting, how the strings shimmer in musical motion, how the light falls. It is unclear how much help this is. (9/13)

The Times receives a strip of canvas in the post, cut from the back edge of the picture, with a note which says that, because capitalist society values treasures more than humanity, the painting will be burnt on St Patrick’s night. (8/13)

A ransom note, purporting to be from the IRA, demands convicted bombers serving life in an English prison be transferred to an Irish prison. (7/13)

The police link this demand to the Symbionese Liberation Army, who have just kidnapped Patty Hearst and demanded food distribution in California, to a value which fluctuates, depending on mood, between $4m and $400m. (6/13)

Various ransom demands arrive. One demands $1.1m of food aid for Grenada, newly independent from Britain and in the midst of civil strife, not unconnected with the Prime Minister having his own secret police called the Mongoose Gang. (5/13)

TV news reports of the theft are hampered by being unable to show an image of the painting, because the company that holds the rights to the colour slide wants £10 and neither ITV nor the BBC has £10 to spare in the austerity of 1974. (4/13)

The frame is found discarded on Hampstead Heath via the psychic intervention of Mrs Nella Jones, who has a vision of where it is while she’s doing the ironing. Her sketch map allegedly leads to a twenty-year career helping the Met, which they are shifty about denying. (3/13)

23 Feb 1974: Vermeer’s Guitar Player is stolen from Kenwood House in Hampstead. A police spokesman says, “We are looking for either a master thief or a madman,” which, as statements go, is only one up from, “We believe this theft to be the work of thieves.” (2/13)

Of course they are, where did you think the Baby Jesus came from?

Narnia. Don't think you can fool us by writing cupboard when you mean wardrobe.

Should perhaps clarify. Shooting script by Stoppard under a pen name.

Once did something similar and am now crippled when wearing them by the thought of the string breaking and all my beautiful pearls plink-plinking away down an escalator. Face it, it’s the wrong place to hold a cocktail party.

...And also a horror film.