The Londoner: ‘Stolen Van Gogh now underworld currency’

In today's Diary: What will happen to the stolen Van Gogh? / Adam Macqueen on unorthodox writer's block / Opera stars raising money for musicians / Geoffrey Cox's unfortunate Easter reading
Marten de Leeuw via AFP
15 April 2020

It was the lockdown theft that shocked the art world, but a leading British Van Gogh expert says that thieves may now use the £5 million stolen Van Gogh painting as “a form of underworld currency” valued at about 10 per cent of its worth.

Van Gogh’s Parsonage Garden at ​Nuenen in Spring (pictured right) was stolen from the Singer Laren museum in the Netherlands in a raid last month.

Martin Bailey, a Van Gogh authority, says it’s “generally accepted that these stolen artworks can’t be sold on the open market, so the only possibility for the thieves is to use them as a so-called currency in the underworld.”

He explains they are “exchanged, sometimes for money, sometimes for illegal commodities like drugs and they then circulate among several gangsters”. In response, London museums have been reviewing their own security. Vernon Rapley of the V&A told us that it is “addressing the new risks and challenges that being closed presents”.

Though the painting’s whereabouts remain unknown, Bailey isn’t downbeat, pointing out to the Art Newspaper’s podcast that the 28 Van Goghs that have previously been stolen were eventually recovered.

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Novelist Adam Macqueen’s Beneath The Streets, a thriller that reimagines the Jeremy Thorpe scandal, met teething problems. One of the real-life characters is the litigious Lady Falkender, so Macqueen had to be “extraordinarily careful”. But when Falkender passed away aged 86, he tells us: “The writing process suddenly got a whole lot easier.”

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Involved: some from the Royal Opera House are raising money (Photo: Alex Davidson/Getty Images)
Getty Images

Opera stars — along with their friends, family and neighbours — have come together to record a new arrangement of Where Have All the Flowers Gone to raise money for Help Musicians, with a fund for those affected by coronavirus. With nearly £8,000 raised, the singers are hoping for more. As Timothy Leary didn’t quite say, turn on, tune in, donate.

SW1A

Voice work: Geoffrey Cox (Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
Barcroft Media via Getty Images

Former attorney general Geoffrey Cox recorded an Easter reading for London church Great St Barts. Unfortunately it began: “I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets.” Not right now you won’t.

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Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns tells “those trying to get political” that there is a “global shortage of PPE gear”. Fair point, but is asking questions forbidden?

Klass showers praise on partner as Ora tunes up

MYLEENE KLASS fondly recalled a moment in the bathtub with her boyfriend Simon Motson, saying: “There’s no one I’d rather be staying home with, eating too many curries.” Rita Ora, meanwhile, announced she will be taking part in the One World: Together at Home online festival celebrating healthcare workers worldwide. And Greg James popped out with his dog while taking some time off his Radio 1 breakfast show.

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