Meet the Indiana Jones of the art world

Some 1,700 artefacts are known to have vanished from museums but the true number could be even higher, says missing treasure detective Arthur Brand, whose record includes recovering a stolen Van Gogh and Hitler's Horses’

- Neil Clark

WHAT have a jaw fragment of a 200-million-old Diphydontosaurus reptile, a calendar bearing a photograph of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, a negative from the late Queen's 1947 wedding, and a 19th-century engraving of King John signing the Magna Carta got in common?

They are just four of the 1,700 or more items known to be missing from publicly funded museums and galleries in England, as revealed by a recent Freedom of Information request. This might sound like a large number of unaccounted-for historic artefacts to you and me but not to renowned Dutch art detective Arthur Brand, who admits: "I'm surprised it's only 1,700."

The "Indiana Jones of the art world", as he is known, specialises in tracking down items missing or stolen from museums and art galleries. He made headlines worldwide last September for recovering a stolen Van Gogh painting worth up to £5.2million - not bad for an amateur driven by love of art alone.

So what is behind the raids on our museums? Brand, 55, an art historian, believes they are all facing the same problem: the sheer volume of items in their care.

The British Museum, for instance, has one per cent of its collection on display. The rest is stored away, sometimes for decades.

So to minimise the risk of artefacts being lost or stolen, museums need to catalogue and photograph everything. Then, they need to check their inventories every two or three years. But that requires a lot of time and experts, who don't come cheap.