My brilliant friend and betrayer, Inigo Philbrick

‘Inigo has never asked me not to write this book, but I had come to wonder whether I would have had the courage to write it were he not imprisoned,’ confesses Orlando Whitfield in his coruscating memoir of his friendship with Inigo Philbrick. He was the art dealer whose meteoric career exploded in spectacular style when he was convicted, aged 35, of wire fraud in 2022. Imagine Whitfield’s alarm on hearing that Philbrick had been released from prison in time for publication.

By ‘flipping’ art works, Philbrick increased his earnings from ‘£35k a year to £35k a month’

Philbrick, who owes $86,672,790 in restitution payments, will have ample opportunity – and cash incentives – to give his side. Producers have come knocking, and an upcoming BBC series offers ‘exclusive documentary access’ to him and his fiancée, the Made in Chelsea star Victoria Baker-Harber. Meanwhile, HBO is adapting Whitfield’s book.

The story is just the latest dish in a tasting menu of schadenfreude being served to a public greedy for hubristic scammers. Yet All That Glitters is not just a cashing-in exercise. It is a lacerating critique of the contemporary art market; a personal account of Whitfield’s disillusionment with that world, which led to a breakdown; and a conflicted elegy to a lost, formative friendship.

Whitfield, the son of a former Christie’s MD, met Philbrick, the son of the director of a Connecticut contemporary art museum, while studying art history at Goldsmith’s in 2006, and was immediately impressed by his erudition and precocious confidence. Together, they began dealing art as undergraduates. Where Whitfield was anxious and sensitive, Philbrick was steely and secretive.

Aged just 23, Philbrick, who had worked for White Cube throughout university, began running Jay Jopling’s art collection. Trading in the ruthless secondary market, where there are megabucks to be made by ‘flipping’ artworks, he quickly inflated his earnings from ‘£35k a year to £35k a month’.