A Canadian hotel has said cunning thieves discreetly swapped a famous photo portrait of British wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill with a fake.
The image of the former prime minister, taken just after his speech to the Canadian parliament in 1941 at the height of the Second World War, was dubbed the "Roaring Lion" Yousuf Karsh, the photographer who took it.
The signed copy of the portrait had been hanging in the swanky Fairmont Château Laurier hotel in the Canadian capital Ottawa, along with five other portraits.
But police were called in to investigate on August 19 after a member of staff spotted the substitution as its frame did not match those of the others.
"I've seen that signature for 43 years. So it took me just one second to know that someone had tried to copy it. It was a fake," said Jerry Fielder, the executor of the Karsh estate who was asked to examine the photo.
The theft was so surreptitious that it remains a mystery how long ago the portrait was taken.
The hotel, which has a collection of Karsh's works, said it was "deeply saddened by this brazen act".
"The hotel is incredibly proud to house this stunning Karsh collection, which was securely installed in 1998," said general manager Geneviève Dumas.
Karsh was an immigrant to Canada who survived the Turkish massacres of ethnic Armenians during the First World War — during which Churchill devised the ill-fated seaborne landings at Gallipoli to seize the Turkish Straits between the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
He took the photo after Churchill, accompanied by Canadian PM Mackenzie King, entered the speaker's chamber after his speech. Churchill would only allow him one shot, but continued to "chomp vigorously at his cigar".
"I waited. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, 'forgive me, sir,' and plucked the cigar out of his mouth," Karsh later recalled. "By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph."