The media have loved the recent spate of stories about high-end book thieves. This time the Financial Times does a tidy wrap-up of the tea leafs robbing our libraries.
In newspaper reports of such crimes, epithets such as “gentlemen thieves” are liberally applied to men such as (Farhad) Hakimzadeh and (William) Jacques. Typically, they are characterised as obsessed academics willing to do almost anything to obtain that ancient tome or map that will fill a gap on their bookshelves. Hakimzadeh’s defence revealed that he spent his wedding night polishing his beloved books, while Gosse offered his own love of books as mitigation for his crime. “I felt the books had been abandoned,” he said. He was given a suspended sentence, a €17,000 fine and was allowed to go back to his teaching job. The archbishop forgave the thief and said he would even allow him (supervised) access to the library.
Surely a thief is a thief is a thief?