Thief at the British Museum: a 'gripping exposé'

The scandal behind the British Museum's missing artefacts had all the makings of a dazzling podcast. A tale of priceless treasures, eccentric antiquities dealers and slippery curators, it felt akin to a "detective story from the golden age of crime", said James Marriott in The Times. "Thank God someone has gone and made it". 

"Thief at the British Museum" delves into the fascinating true story of how hundreds of precious stones vanished from the UK's most visited attraction over a 10-year period before being sold on eBay – without anyone sounding the alarm. When the story finally came to light, curator Peter Higgs was sacked. Former chancellor and the museum's chair of trustees George Osborne said the institution had been "the victim of an inside job", but Higgs denied the allegations. 

Now, said Tristram Fane Saunders in The Telegraph, this "gripping nine-part exposé" is delving into how the scandal came to light. The podcast follows Dr Ittai Gradel – a charismatic Danish antiquities dealer who realised something was badly wrong. 

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A lot more "fun" than you'd expect a "mild-mannered expert in Greco-Roman miniatures to be", Gradel reveals how he figured out the museum's artefacts were being sold online and embarked on a quest to hunt down the stolen gems, all while dealing with a terminal cancer diagnosis (he is now in remission). Asked why he would spend what could have been his last weeks tracking down the missing treasures, he said: "You can't spend your entire day concentrating on dying."

The "warm, classy" series is neatly presented by the BBC's culture and media editor, Katie Razzall, who builds up a "lovely rapport" with Gradel, said Miranda Sawyer in The Guardian. Thanks to his photographic memory and many visits to the museum as a young man, the "hero of the series" realises that the gems are being sold on eBay nefariously and traces the vendor to a PayPal account registered to Higgs's personal email address. 

"Slam dunk, you'd think, but the tale doesn't end with Gradel's sleuthing": trying to get his detective work taken seriously proves much harder than expected. The British Museum eventually launched legal proceedings against Higgs, who denies the thefts and is currently defending the civil case brought against him. No one has yet been arrested or charged.

The real crime, noted Saunders in The Telegraph, is the museum's "appalling handling" of the thefts, from the decade-long disappearances of the artefacts, to the lengthy refusal to accept the eventual tip-off from Gradel. "I began to wonder whether the British Museum deserved its gems back after all."

It's certainly an "electrifying" series, said Daisy Dunn in The Spectator. But Gradel's resemblance to Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes is "hammed up" to an "irritating degree" and the references to his "specialist knowledge about history" will get on the nerves of "anyone with an ounce of intelligence". 

Still, said Marriott in The Times, the "deftly told" story is a "pleasure" to listen to: "I was hooked."