Aidan Dodson

Things were already in their packing cases, so he was having to peer into these things.

I think what basically happened was that, yes, I think he did pull a fast one.

I think what Borchardt was doing was he was making sure that it was as difficult as possible for Lefebvre, who was the inspector, to look at the stuff, and also was hoping that Lefebvre wouldn't ask for stuff to be taken out of the crates.

I think that was the point.

But I think what it was done was that it was made as difficult as possible for Lefebvre to inspect these things in detail.

And he was keeping his fingers crossed that at no point would Lefebvre say, no, can I get that out, please?

I want to have a close look at it.

presumably it was late in the day Lefebvre wanted to go home and therefore he signed it off have a nice pastis in the evening put his legs up there is also a wonder whether or not actually there was a nice dinner waiting once he'd done that so let's get the paperwork done and we can go and sit down and have a

The issue is that whether or not there was skullduggery involved, the relevant form was signed off by an appropriate official.

So they can take a very, very legalistic view of it.

And the thing that was interesting... The Germans would never do that.

But actually, when the plan had been to return, it was actually negotiated by Hermann Göring.

He was the one who said he'd send it back.

The delicacy of it was it was being given to the Egyptian king for his birthday or for his anniversary of accession.

So they weren't admitting that it shouldn't have gone.

They were taking to view it had been legally exported to Germany, but now Germany was giving it to the king of Egypt as a present.

So there were some important sort of subtleties involved in how the diplomacy was being done.

Sadly, it's an inflatable one.

Not at all.

No, this was bought from the museum shop in St.