A RARE books dealer accused of stealing a priceless Shakespeare volume, also claimed to deal in Edwardian jewellery, a court has been told.

Raymond Scott’s claim emerged shortly before a jury retired to consider whether he is guilty of stealing a Shakespeare First Folio from Durham University library, in December 1998.

Judge Richard Lowden, summing up the case against Mr Scott following a Newcastle Crown Court trial lasting more than two weeks, said the 53-year-old claimed to have dealt in Edwardian jewellery for 20 years, before moving into book dealing for a further eight.

Judge Lowden urged the jury of five men and seven women to take their time and said currently he would only accept a unanimous verdict.

Mr Scott, of Manor Grange, Wingate, County Durham, also denies handling and transporting stolen goods.

After more than two hours of deliberations yesterday afternoon, the judge sent the jury home for the night, inviting them to return to continue their discussions this morning. The £1m folio, dating from 1623, was brought to Durham by Bishop Cosin and kept in Cosin’s Library.

It was missing for nearly ten years before Mr Scott produced it at the Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington DC, US, in June 2008, claiming he had acquired it in Cuba, the home of his fiancee – 23-year-old Havana nightclub dancer Heidi Garcia Rios.

During the trial, the jury was shown photographs which, in the words of Judge Lowden, showed Ms Rios “clothed only in strategically placed bath towels”.

“We’d come a long way from Bishop Cosin’s Library when we got to those photographs,”

the judge said.

The trial heard Mr Scott paraded as an international playboy swigging champagne, driving a Ferrari and smoking Cuban cigars, while living on state benefits in a two-up twodown former council house with his elderly mother in Washington, Wearside.

During the court’s lunch break yesterday, Mr Scott moved to the nearby Slug and Lettuce pub, where, wearing a white T-shirt with black stars and his trademark designer sunglasses, he was spotted sipping a cocktail on the quayside terrace.