Raymond Scott is a British book dealer. One night, about ten years ago, he was in Cuba visiting his girlfriend, a dancer at Havana’s Tropicana Club, when his eye fell upon a 1623 Shakespeare First Folio just sitting there at the bar.
O brave new world,
That has such manuscripts in’t!
He grabbed it, hid it in his house in County Durham, and then, last year, flew to Washington’s Folger Library and asked the staff to verify its authenticity.
The staff had him arrested, and now his trial in England begins.
He says it’s all a conspiracy. “[E]xperts desperate to recover the stolen Durham University folio had conspired against him.”
UD is unclear what he means. As the trial progresses, perhaps the basis of his defense will become clearer.
June 29th, 2010 at 11:10AM
So, this Mr. Scott lived with his elderly mama in Washington, Tyne and Wear until, one fine day, he went to Havana to visit his girlfriend, a dancer at Tropicana… and then…
June 29th, 2010 at 12:10PM
Yes. Mr UD and I, at breakfast this morning, similarly sought to put this narrative together, piece by piece…
June 29th, 2010 at 2:15PM
I need to start lurking more frequently in Havana nightclubs, apparently. Simultaneously feed my affinities for incunabula and mambo music.
I’m waiting for the day when I sit at a bar stool long enough and someone mistakenly leaves behind a Sanctae Peregrinationes or Gutenberg Bible. A guy can dream, according to Mr. Scott.