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- A heist is a theft of cash or valuable objects such as artworks, jewellery or bullion. This can take the form of either a burglary or a robbery, the difference in English and Welsh law being that a robbery uses force (which means that some of the heists commonly known as robberies were actually burglaries). In order to be listed here, each heist which took place in the United Kingdom is required to have taken a total sum of £1 million or more in cash or goods at contemporary rates. The largest heist was £291.9 million (equivalent to £710 million in 2021) taken in the City bonds robbery, although Charles Darwin's notebooks (announced as having been most likely stolen in 2020) were never valued. The largest cash robbery was the Securitas depot robbery. The heists vary in location and form. Railway trains were plundered in the Great Gold Robbery and the Great Train Robbery and in 1935 there was a robbery at the Croydon Aerodrome. Exhibition spaces such as the Ashmolean Museum, the Christ Church Picture Gallery, the Harley Gallery, the National Gallery and the Whitworth Art Gallery, and stately homes such as Blenheim Palace, Drumlanrig Castle, Ramsbury Manor and Waddesdon Manor have suffered losses. Graff jewellery shops in London have been attacked several times, alongside other shops in Bond Street and Hatton Garden. Banks, secure warehouses and vaults were targeted in the cases of the Brink's-Mat robbery, the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary, the Knightsbridge Security Deposit robbery and the Northern Bank Robbery. Regarding artworks, the Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III by Rembrandt has been stolen a total of four times. Other paintings subject to theft include works by Cézanne, Goya and Henry Moore. The perpetrators range from individuals such as Kempton Bunton to syndicates like the Pink Panthers. (en)
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