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By Root 480 0

team. His reasoning astonished everyone. His case, he explained, was far more sinister than they could imagine. It no longer involved a handful of bad paintings. Instead, it centered on a multibillion-dollar arms industry that sold covert weapons to nations with the British government’s approval. This conspiracy of middlemen, gun runners, and Crown spies had been funded through the sale of thousands of works of modern art. When the government realized that the true story was about to emerge at the trial, it had sent its agents to silence Drewe. That he was standing before the court was conclusive proof that they had failed. Now he alone possessed the requisite skills and inside knowledge to unravel the convoluted conspiracy. He would handle his own defense, thanks very much.

Sitting high above the barristers in his seventeenth-century ceremonial wig and gown—symbols of the majesty of British law—Judge Geoffrey Rivlin listened carefully to Drewe’s peculiar petition. The defendant announced that he planned to call top government officials and arms dealers to the witness stand who knew of covert weapons sales to nations, including Iran, Iraq, and Sierra Leone. Documents in his possession and eyewitness accounts of the plot would shed light on the evil forces arrayed against him. All he wanted was a court-appointed legal adviser to help him navigate the finer points of the law.

John Bevan, the prosecutor, noted that Drewe’s original defense statement had made no mention of such a conspiracy.

Judge Rivlin strongly advised Drewe against representing himself, but the professor would not be deterred. Rivlin was well aware of his repeated success in delaying the start of the trial, and he probably suspected that Drewe was once again trying to drag the proceedings out. If he were to begin a protracted search for new counsel, who would need months to prepare his case, it would delay the trial “indefinitely, possibly permanently,” the judge concluded. Consequently, he allowed Drewe to represent himself but refused to grant him a legal assistant.

Drewe seemed composed and confident, and appeared to enjoy his newest incarnation as a barrister. Each morning he arrived in court in a freshly pressed suit, with a silk handkerchief tucked in his top pocket and a tie that had a snakelike pattern. His con man’s sensitivity to body language, dress, and manner was especially well-honed, and enabled him to adopt the style and appearance of a successful courtroom veteran. A model of propriety, he maintained a firm but always decorous tone when addressing the judge and his adversaries at the prosecutor’s table.

“With all due respect to my learned friend,” he would say, or “if it pleases your lordship,” or “may I respectfully draw the court’s attention to . . .” With a flourish, he would address the “ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” punctuating his presentation with sudden gestures and the occasional accusatory roar. A well-timed guffaw would communicate his special contempt for a contention advanced by the prosecution. It was a grand performance, worthy of Charles Laughton and Rumpole of the Bailey. One prosecutor told a colleague that if Drewe had been grounded in reality, he might have made an excellent barrister.

Drewe argued that he had been made a scapegoat by officials determined to conceal a “cesspit of corruption.” Arrayed against him, he said, were the Ministry of Defence, the Crown Prosecution Service—which he accused of withholding evidence that supported his claims—Whitehall, the Art and Antiques Squad, and a cabal of auction houses. “A web of deceit has allowed art dealers to join in the horrible conspiracy,” he declared, explaining that the plot involved more than four thousand paintings—many of them that proved to be fake—sold to finance the weapons deals.

These courtroom antics were widely considered a stratagem of last resort in the service of an indefensible defense, but the prosecutors had to make sure that Drewe would not sweep away a single member of the jury. The detectives in the gallery paid particular attention whenever