The Feather Thief

The Prologue to The Feather Thief opens by describing the 2009 heist of the British Natural History Museum at Tring. Johnson retraces the steps of the thief Edwin Rist, who was a 20-year-old American student studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Rist, armed only with latex gloves, a flashlight, a wire cutter, a glass cutter, and a suitcase, committed the feather heist after a flute performance with the Royal Academy of Music.

The feather heist is quite remarkable given Rist is not a professional thief. Johnson describes how Rist walked for nearly an hour from the train station to the town of Tring. To access the museum, Rist had to navigate a narrow alleyway and cut through barbed wire and glass. His feather heist nearly failed when he dropped his glass cutter into a ravine. Nevertheless, Rist persevered in getting into the museum by breaking the glass window with a rock. Once in the museum, Rist rolled his suitcase to the museum’s ornithological (bird) collection, which is one of the largest collections in the world. Rist then stuffed his suitcase with 299 preserved tropical bird skins, many of which were collected by the mid-19th century naturalist