In this episode, Emma tells Olivia about the 1961 theft of Francisco Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. This story takes us through flamboyant ransom letters, the question of television licenses, and of one man's journey as a rebel looking for his cause.

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/

Some references for this episode:

Hirsch, Alan, and Noah Charney. The Duke of Wellington, Kidnapped!: The Incredible True Story of the Art Heist That Shocked a Nation. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2017.

Hughes, Robert. Goya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Postman, Anew, and Neil Postman. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books, 2014.

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington by Lord Alfred Tennyson

https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/dee-wells-h3n83v0kxfw

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2005/03/01/the-national-gallery-purchases-raphaels-madonna-of-the-pinks-what-we-know

https://pricelessblog.squarespace.com/articles/goyas-portrait-of-the-duke-of-wellington-theft

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francisco-Goya

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220221-the-duke-the-bus-driver-a-goya-masterpiece