Butterfly Thief (eBook)

adventure, empire, and Australia's greatest museum heist

Walter Marsh (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
368 Seiten
Scribe Publications Pty Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-76138-636-7 (ISBN)

Infos

The story of the most audacious serial heist in the history of Australia's museums - and the British gentleman adventurer who pulled it off and got away with it - in a scientific true-crime caper stretching around the globe.In January 1947, a chance discovery rocked the world of natural science: over 3,000 rare and precious specimens of butterflies had vanished from Australia s most prestigious museums in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. Alarmingly, the missing insects included many priceless holotypes the first specimen of a given species to be identified, against which all others are compared.On the other side of the world, New Scotland Yard descended on a country house in Surrey, where they found a trove of over 40,000 butterfly specimens. The culprit was Colin Wyatt, a Cambridge-educated ski champion, mountaineer, wartime camouflager, artist, and amateur naturalist whose high-flying exploits cut a path from the Alps of Europe to a London court room to a final expedition to the jungles of Guatemala.Drawing on unpublished case files, dossiers, and private archives, The Butterfly Thief pieces together Wyatt s enigmatic life story and his decades-long impact on the world of natural history. Along the way, award-winning journalist Walter Marsh reveals a deeper history of gentleman explorers, scoundrels, and grave-robbers that begs an uncomfortable but vital question: What if Western museums were crime scenes all along?

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.9.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Naturführer
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• ISBN-10: 1-76138-636-0 / 1761386360
• ISBN-13: 978-1-76138-636-7 / 9781761386367