A career criminal who stole a “historically unique” 350-year-old map from a museum and refused to reveal its location has been jailed for three years.

Melvin West, 70, was told by a judge he had led police, the courts and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich a “merry dance” about the whereabouts of the map he stole from the Caird Library in February last year.

Woolwich Crown Court heard on Thursday that West, from Chingford in East London, had done a recce of the museum library before he used a Stanley knife to slice one of 12 maps out of an atlas, printed in 1684, by Dutch cartographer Frederick de Wit.

The map, which has still not been found despite an earlier court hearing being adjourned so West could recover from heart surgery and return the item, was a celebrated example of a double hemisphere world map called Nova Orbis Tabula, the Metropolitan Police said.

Prosecution counsel Damian Warburton told the court the completed atlas was valued at around £50,000, with the stolen map worth £6,000…