Courtroom drachma: mock trial tackles the mystery of stolen Greek treasure

In a fictitious case, academics imagine how justice over high-profile museum thefts might unfold.

- Andrew Anthony reports

Almost hidden within the Victorian gothic grandeur of Oxford town hall is an old courtroom that, with its oak panels and red leather benches, looks like the kind of place that might house a trial in Midsomer Murders.

On a sweltering Thursday last week, it did host a trial that was filmed, but this was a mock trial rather than a TV drama, and the cameras belonged to a Danish documentary crew.

Joseph Duveen, a senior curator of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Cornish Museum, was on trial for handling stolen goods. The prosecution's case was that he used his position to remove thousands of Greco-Roman objects from his department and sell them on eBay.

Duveen, like the Cornish Museum, is an invention, but some readers may feel that his case rings a bell. Swap the word "Cornish" for "British" and suddenly the artefacts that were reported missing from the Greek and Roman department of the British Museum two years ago come speedily to mind.

In that case, which led to the resignation of the museum’s director and deputy director, eBay also featured as the platform on which the missing objects were sold. Suspicion fell on the former head of the Greek and Roman department, Peter Higgs, who was sacked for gross misconduct.