The strange story of Marie Antoinette’s self-winding watch

For more than 20 years 'The Queen' rested in a cardboard box, shrouded in an old newspaper. This was the fate of one of the costliest pocket watches in the world, a brilliant masterpiece by the clockmaker Louis Breguet that was completed in 1827, a full 44 years after it was commissioned for Marie Antionette. It disappeared from public view in a burglary that took place on April 15, 1983, after many years of having been on display at the small LA Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem. There it formed part of a collection of 106 antique timepieces, among them the 'Sympathiques' clock - another Breguet masterpiece - and a pistol-shaped clock made by the Rochat Brothers.

At the time of the heist I was living in an apartment with a low window that overlooked the concealed path along which the loot was spirited away. But I didn't hear a thing; the robbery took place in silence at an hour when the world was asleep. So it was that Jerusalem and the world lost for about 25 years the timepieces from the exquisite collection donated to the museum by Vera, daughter of Sir David Lionel Salomons, a magistrate, politician and banker in England.

The Israeli police have revealed that a man robbed the museum single-handedly

When as a young reporter I began to investigate the incident, the prevailing assumption was that a gang of three or four had penetrated through the rear entrance and worked through the night despite the presence in the museum of two guards: the amount of tools, food and bottles left behind suggested the involvement of an at least three-strong gang. It was presumed that the swag had fallen into the hands of some solitary billionaire who was privately enjoying the beauty of the stolen goods and the charms of the French queen - a queen reckoned to be worth about $30m, yet unsaleable on the open market because of its fame. The value of the collection made the robbery one of the largest in history, and for more than 20 years the authorities searched, investigated and waited.

Only this winter, 25 years after the burglary, did the Israeli police permit publication of the fact that a man who 40 years ago had become a criminal legend in Israel had committed the daring robbery single-handedly. Naaman Diller has been dead for fours years now, but the revelation that the former kibbutznik was the thief links two amazing stories from the annals of Israeli crime.

Diller was one of my childhood heroes - if the son of a teacher can adopt a criminal as a hero, as a kind of rebellion against respectability. In the 1960s Diller, a very gaunt and silent man, was an extraordinary bank robber in a young and socialist country