Untitled Books

William Jacques sent to prison for three-and-a-half years for thefts worth £40,000 from Royal Horticultural Society library

A serial book thief who used a Cambridge degree and a tweed jacket as a "shabby cloak of respectability" to mask his deeds was jailed for three-and-a-half years today for stealing books worth £40,000 from the Royal Horticultural Society's library. There was, as the prosecution pointed out, little sophistication in the strategy employed by William Jacques, who had already been given a four-year sentence for plundering £1m-worth of rare books in the late 1990s.