ENTERTAINMENT

LONDON – A 400-year-old volume of Shakespeare stolen in England a decade ago and valued at $30 million has been recovered after a man walked into a library in Washington, D.C., and asked to have it authenticated.

"There was something about it that felt a little off to us," said Garland Scott, director of external relations at the Folger Shakespeare Library, one of the world's leading centers of Shakespearean research.

A 51-year-old man was arrested in the English town of Washington on Thursday and was being questioned Friday.

It could not immediately be determined whether the man in custody is the man who visited the Folger.

The man lives in a modest home in a working-class neighborhood – the ancestral town of George Washington.

But there was a silver Ferrari in his driveway and Armani suits in the closets. The small home was crammed with antique books.

The Shakespeare folio was among seven centuries-old books and manuscripts stolen in December 1998 from a display case at the Durham University library in northeast England.

Police said the man claimed to be an international businessman when he took the book to the Folger Library. He said he bought the volume in Cuba.

Library staff asked to keep the book while they did research and later discovered it was stolen. They told the FBI, which launched an international search for the man.

"Like Shakespeare himself, this book is a national treasure giving a rare and beautiful snapshot of Britain's incredible literary heritage," said American writer Bill Bryson, the university's chancellor, whose books include Shakespeare: The World as a Stage.

The first folio was published seven years after Shakespeare's death and was the first collected edition of his plays. Some 750 copies were printed, and about a third have survived, though most are incomplete.

The book is in a climate-controlled vault at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. Durham police said authorities thought it would be safer there than in "an FBI warehouse next to piles of cocaine and cannabis."

The Associated Press, The Washington Post