Dealer cleared of stealing rare Shakespeare folio

The charges relate to one of the surviving copies of the 1623

compendium of Shakespeare's plays which went missing from Durham University in 1998.

The book, which has been described as part of England's "cultural legacy", was handed in by Raymond Scott to the world-renowned Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC a decade later.

Scott was remanded in custody by Judge Richard Lowden, who told him: "There will, in due time, be an inevitable substantial custodial sentence."

The judge at Newcastle Crown Court adjourned the case to a date to be fixed to allow a psychiatric report to be prepared.

Scott was arrested after presenting the badly damaged folio to staff at the US library and asking for it to be verified as genuine.

Experts at the institution, which houses a third of the world's surviving copies of the First Folio, suspected the book was stolen and called in the British Embassy, Durham Police and the FBI.

They discovered the artefact was an incredibly rare and unique example of the folio which had gone missing in a raid at Durham University in December 1998.

The book was taken from a secured glass cabinet in an exhibition of ancient English literature at the university's Palace Green Library.

Scott, of Manor Grange, Wingate, County Durham, was arrested in June 2008. He claimed to have discovered the book in Cuba. He denied all charges.

After the case, Durham chief Crown Prosecutor Chris Enzor said the theft of the First Folio had been a "devastating loss" to the university and the literary world as a whole.

He said: "Raymond Scott is a dishonest conman, a serial thief who found himself in possession of a national treasure.

"This is a man who, in reality, lived on benefits with his mother but was running up huge credit card debts, funding a lavish lifestyle, driving a Ferrari, travelling around the world, staying in luxury hotels and dressing in expensive clothes.

"No doubt the pressure of his debts led him to try and sell the folio."

'CORNERSTONE of literature'

n The stolen Shakespeare First Folio, considered to be "a cornerstone of English literature", was mutilated by the book thief in an act of cultural barbarism.

n Published in 1623, the Folio included 36 of Shakespeare's plays and was designed as a lasting monument to his work.

n It founded Shakespeare's reputation as the greatest dramatist in the English language.

n Some 750 copies were printed and sold, of which no more than 230 survive today.

n After it was stolen someone tried to mask its unique "DNA" by removing pages, which have never been recovered. In doing so they halved its estimated value of 3m.