Blade runner

A quest to find Horace Walpole's missing Ottoman dagger unveiled a story of 16th-century diplomacy, Victorian theatre and a notorious heist

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THE mists of time have swallowed Horace Walpole's Ottoman dagger.

It once took pride of place at his Gothic fairy-tale castle, Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham, Middlesex. After his death, it passed into the hands of actor and antiquarian Charles Kean—but it has long vanished. A few years ago, Strawberry Hill principal curator Silvia Davoli began a quest to find it—and has unearthed a story weaving together early diplomacy, Victorian theatre and one of Britain's most infamous heists.

Walpole believed that his dagger had once belonged to Henry VIII—it's this association that made it important for him—and showed it off in his Tribune, which, much like the Medici original at the Uffizi in Florence, Italy, was where he kept his most treasured possessions. He also had numerous drawings done, which is how Dr Davoli, then the house's research curator, first clapped eyes on it. Walpole's collection is perhaps the best documented of the 18th century, not only because he wrote detailed letters to his friends and commissioned two descriptions of the villa and its contents, but also because he tasked draughtsman and architect John Carter to produce views of the room and life-size drawings of many objects, including several beautiful ones of the dagger.