Benwell bus driver art heist story re-told on big screen
IT’S a bizarre story that starts in Newcastle then takes in London, a Bond film and now a Hollywood film star.
The true story of how an unassuming 61-year-old Geordie pulled off the theft of a famous Old Master painting is set to be played out to audiences across the UK on the release of a new movie starring Oscar winners Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren.
The Duke is set for release in cinemas on November 6 and the comedy drama will reveal how a former bus driver called Kempton Bunton, from Benwell, made the headlines with a crime that stunned the art world in the 1960s: the brazen theft of an 1812 portrait of the Duke of Wellington by Goya – the only painting ever to have been stolen from The National Gallery in London.
It’s a curious tale that has been out of the spotlight for years but back then the disappearance of the Goya was a mystery which for months was the talk of the country.
It sparked a level of publicity comparable to that of the Great Train Robbery and even earned a place in James Bond film Dr No, starring Sean Connery, where the missing Goya is shown on an easel in the enemy den and is spotted by 007 who remarks: “So there it is.”
It was revealed earlier this year that filming was under way on a new film based on the tale with Broadbent playing Kempton and Hollywood favourite Mirren taking the role of his wife.
How much of Kempton’s Newcastle roots will feature in the movie has yet to be seen as it was mostly shot in Yorkshire, although the cast does feature at least one local name in actor Craig Conway.
Kempton was said to have been enraged that £140,000 had been spent on securing Goya’s famous painting of The Iron Duke – who defeated Napoleon at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo – for the nation when pensioners were being expected to pay a £4 TV licence fee levy.
He himself had been fined £2 by Newcastle magistrates for refusing to pay his TV licence, on the basis he only watched ITV, and he was then jailed for 13 days.
How he pulled off the grand theft was a mystery and there were plenty twists and turns to the story, including an unusual ransom demand, before the painting was recovered four years later, with Kempton eventually cleared of its theft on the basis he did not intend to permanently deprive the nation of the Old Master which he had hidden away in a bedroom cupboard. He was, however, convicted of stealing its still-missing frame.
The story of the late Bunton was earlier told in a 2015 local play called The Duke in the Cupboard and it is also the subject of a new musical by Richard Voyce who has uncovered yet another twist, involving Bunton’s son, in the extraordinary tale.