virtueangel asked:
Hi Neil. I’ve let a lot of my questions go unanswered or stuck to my own speculation because I know you’ve got quite a full inbox, but there’s one scene that I can’t seem to make any sense of even after doing outside research. When Crowley and Aziraphale go to the pub in S2E2 and Aziraphale asks Crowley if he knows who Jane Austen is, Crowley says that he’d never forget her because she was the “mastermind” behind the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. When I first watched the episode, that reference did seem familiar to me but I couldn’t place my finger on where it was from. So I did some research on this supposed heist and all that comes up is text posts of people on Tumblr quoting that conversation from the show, or the Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate in the 1980s-‘90s. The Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery isn’t a real thing that happened, is it? What is Crowley alluding to with that? Or who is he getting Jane Austen mixed up with?
I’m surprised that enterprising people haven’t created an entire website by now telling in detail the story of the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. Perhaps it was hushed up.