A golden ring once given as a present by the famed Irish writer Oscar Wilde has been recovered by a Dutch “art detective” nearly 20 years after it was stolen from Britain’s Oxford University.
The frie ndship ring, a joint gift from Wilde to a fellow student in 1876, was taken during a burglary in 2002 at Magdalen College, where the legendary dandy studied. At the time it was valued at £35,000 (US$45,143).
The trinket’s whereabouts remained a mystery for years and there were fears that the ring — shaped like a belt and buckle and made from 18-carat gold — had even been melted down.
Photo: AFP
Yet Arthur Brand, a Dutchman dubbed the “Indiana Jones of the Art World” for recovering a series of high-profile stolen artworks, used his underworld connections to finally find it.
Magdalen College home bursar Mark Blandford-Baker said that they were “very pleased to have back a stolen item that forms part of a collection relating to one of our more famous alumni.”
“We had given up hope of seeing it again,” he said.
The ring will be handed back “at a small ceremony” on Dec. 4, Blandford-Baker said, adding: “We are extremely grateful to Arthur Brand for finding it and returning it to us.”
The ring was an important part of Magdalen’s large collection of memorabilia related to Wilde, who penned classics such as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest.
It was a present from Wilde and fellow student Reginald Harding to their friend William Ward in 1876 while the Irishman was a student at Magdalen, one of the three dozen colleges that make up Oxford University.
The ring bears the inscription in Greek that says: “Gift of love, to one who wishes love.” It also has “O.F.O.F.W.W. + R.R.H. to W.W.W.” written on the inside.
Disaster struck in 2002 when a former college cleaner named Eamonn Andrews broke into Magdalen, got drunk on whisky from the college bar, then stole the ring and two unrelated medals.
The college at the time offered a £3,500 reward for the ring’s safe return — but after he was caught, the burglar told a court that he had sold the golden band to a scrap dealer for £150.
That might have been that, had Brand not picked up the scent a few years back.
“Rumors started in 2015 in the art underworld that a Victorian ring has surfaced ‘with some Russian writing on it,’” Brand told a correspondent, who saw the ring at an apartment in Amsterdam.
“I knew that Oscar Wilde’s ring was stolen from Magdalen College at Oxford and that it had a Greek inscription on it. It could have only been the same ring,” he said.
The Dutchman then started to put out feelers. Together with a London-based antiques dealer named William Veres, their inquiries eventually led them to George Crump, a man whom Brand described as a “decent man with knowledge of the London criminal underworld because of his late uncle, a well-known casino owner.”
Through Crump, Brand and Veres finally managed to track down and negotiate the safe return of the stolen ring.
Brand has previously hit the headlines for returning stolen artworks including a Picasso painting stolen from yacht in France, and Hitler’s Horses, two bronze statues made by Nazi sculptor Joseph Thorak.
The story of this latest find could have a final twist worthy of one of Wilde’s tales.
Wilde’s ring might have never been discovered were it not for another heist, when a gang of elderly criminals raided a vault in London’s jewelry district in 2015 in what was described as the “biggest burglary in English legal history.”
“There are very strong indications that the appearance of the ring is linked to the 2015 burglary at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit,” Brand said.
“Rumors that the ring has reappeared first started a few weeks after the burglary, and I was given the ring right in front of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit ... which I thought was a bit of English humor,” he said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese