Mon 11/15 @ 7PM
Wealthy British debutante Rose Dugdale began to rebel against her upbringing while at Oxford in the early 1960s. She threw over the traces entirely after earning a PhD in economics at the University of London. Instead of a high-level banking job as might be expected, she became a radical and a radical advocate for the poor, to whom she gave her share of her family money.
She then became involved with the revolutionary Irish Republican Army, was involved with a helicopter bombing raid and then, in a brazen act, joined other IRA members in a violent home invasion in which they netted 19 old master paintings by artists such as Vermeer, Rubens and Goya. The paintings were retrieved and she served six years in prison. Now aged 80, she’s unrepentant.
Anthony M. Amore, who is Director of Security and Chief Investigator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, leading the ongoing attempt to retrieve 13 arts works taken from the museum in 1990, has written about Dugdale, focusing on the art theft, in his book The Woman Who Stole Vermeer: The True Story of Rose Dugdale and the Russborough House Art Heist. In it he proposes that she probably committed other heists as well.
Amore will be the guest of the Hudson Library and Historical Society for a virtual Zoom author talk. It’s free but registration is required. Go here. Copies of Amore’s book will be available through Hudson’s Learned Owl Book Shop.