Customer Reviews

Roll of the Dice: A True Saga of Love, Money and Betrayal

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Although this book is let down by poor editing, the story itself is something of a classic. In many parts hilariously recounted, Roll the Dice tells how a brilliant young man who seemingly had it all staged an armed robbery of precious gems in a New York hotel and manged to convince Lloyds of London to pay out some £2M in insurance moneys. The fact that Lloyds had, in the eyes of the author, been responsible for his father's loss of an equivalent sum, was sweet revenge to him. Although some would see this as a convenient explanation, to be fair to Guppy, he makes clear that this was only part of his motivation, with sheer bravado and boredom with the gilded society in which he mixed playing at least as important a role. Two years after his sting against the world's largest insurers, however, he was betrayed by a supergrass who had struck a deal with police officers in return for leniency for his own criminal endeavours and Guppy found himself in Brixton jail. For me the most fascinationg aspect of the story is the insight given into the author's character. As a result of his exploits, Guppy became for a number of years a favourite subject matter for the British media - hardly surprising since his story could have come straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster - but his portrayal at their hands was at best two dimensional and, more often than not, plain libellous. One cannot help feeling that many of the criticisms levelled agaisnt him were prompted by envy and a sense of schadenfreude. The reader detects an interesting mix of anarchism and puritanism in the author, together with a profound dissatisfaction with the privileged and vacuous sloane ranger set with which he came into contact as a result of his upbringing. It is quite clear, for example, that he feels more at home with the armed robbers and assorted villains he meets in prison, and whom he describes as more interesting, more honourable and, paradoxically, more honest than the cocktail party set he found so dull. Interesting too is his friendship with Earl Spencer, brother of the Princess of Wales, with whom he bonds despite his background and not because of it, and also his love affair with a working class girl from the North of England whom he marries and with whom he has a child. Although a number of reviewers have labelled Guppy "arrogant" as a rsult of his actions, this seems a faulty description. Far from being arrogant, Guppy comes across as an intelligent and able young man with a sense of humour who feels empathy with those less fortunate than himself, such as his fellow inmates in jail, and as someone who has a deep sense of loyalty towards his family and friends. One suspects that it is his hatred of the media and his contempt for the upper echelons of English society and of the establishment whom he regards as hypocritical and immoral that have, in fact, earned him the label "arrogant." Rather, Guppy is a character with which any buccaneer from Elizabethan times or any 19th Century Anarchist would have identified. The world would surely be a duller place without such people.

For me, the keywords or key phrases for this autobiography, published in 1996, would not be the obvious ones (faked jewel robbery, Eton, Oxford, Princess Diana, socialites etc) but these two: identity and loyalty.

Guppy was born from the married union of an English explorer and a Persian (or Iranian) lady who was at one time a quite well known singer (Shusha: a couple of her CD's are available on Amazon). She also won an Oscar for best documentary in 1977 (not mentioned in this book, I think).His mother was beautiful, his father seems to have been a fine man who gave up shooting wildlife after a watershed experience in the South American rainforest. The father lost virtually all his inherited money (the family had estates at one time in Trinidad) after having become a Name at Lloyds of London. Guppy junior blamed the conniving professionals at the insurance market for using people like his father, though their was little public sympathy for the thousands of ruined Names, many of whom after all had enjoyed good incomes for years, even decades, for doing nothing (except risking their all). Many thought that they had just lost a gamble. Guppy junior, however, wanted revenge for his father's sake and because his beloved boyhood home, The Pond, had been, as he saw it, stolen from his family.

Darius Guppy went to Eton and then Magdalen College at Oxford. His closest friends had the same background. Notable among those friends were Princess Diana's husband Charles, Earl Spencer, the present-day candidate for Mayor of London, Boris Johnson; also, Ben Marsh, who became Darius' co-defendant when they tried to fake a robbery in New York City, claiming they had lost a huge amount in jewels which were well-insured --- by Lloyds...Guppy received a 5 year sentence(in reality 8 year, because he at first refused to return any of the monies he gained from the crime).

Johnson and Guppy were both members of the Bullingon ('dining') Club, where diners paid £400 a head for dinner (in today's terms, perhaps £1,000) and thought it OK to trash restaurants and hotels so long as a generous cheque paid for the damage. The photograph of the members of this club is a shock: what a collection of vacant, vapid, looking-down-the-nose judgemental nobodies! Decadence does not even begin to describe them. Interestingly, the present Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, was also a member of the Bullingdon and around the same time.

Guppy also joined the even more decadent Piers Gaveston club, known for sexual orgies and drug-taking. He admits to its decadence, while, characteristically, remaining loyal to some of its drug-abusing deceased members (Olivia Channon, daughter of the brainless Conservative Cabinet member; also, Gottfried von Bismarck) and even a girl who supplied Olivia Channing with heroin. He criticizes the University for sending her down! Indeed, Darius does seem by nature unable to accept any established authority. The "Establishment" is always wrong, his friends always right. The incident also, however, epitomizes his loyalty, his strong suit.

Identity: Like many another of a mixed ethno-social background, Guppy tries to reconcile two very different strands (Christian/Muslim, Iranian and English, albeit, as he takes pains to point out, both rather "upper class"). The binding matter seems to have been the Eton/Oxford experience. He admits that he was torn between Christianity and Islam, though eventually (while in prison) plumping for Islam, having encountered (interestingly...) the now-notorious Abu Hamza, then (in the early 1990's) doing time for social security fraud but now one of those extradited to the USA for involvement in Al Quaeda and its activities. Guppy became very friendly with Hamza, who, like Darius, was a noted martial arts exponent (Taekwando; Guppy preferred the not unalike skill of karate).

Loyalty: Darius' expectation of loyalty from others and, true, his unstinting loyalty TO others (as at Oxford), runs like a silver thread through this book. It is the "hired hands'" disloyalties which enrage him and the steadfast loyalty of others (notably Charles Spencer, who stayed loyal to Guppy through his trial and imprisonment) which he applauds the most. I wonder what if any is his loyalty now to men like Abu Hamza, men who hate European civilization, 12-15 years on? As for Boris Johnson, he demonstrated marked disloyalty by trying to make journalistic capital out of the association, also tape-recording personal conversations and selling them on to newspapers. He may be the new Mayor of London, incredibly.

Reading the book now, 12 years after it came out, one realizes that Guppy has slightly fudged the record: his wife was said to have been a factory worker, receptionist and model, though the newspapers also claimed that she ran an escort agency at one time; Guppy disclaims any violent tendencies while admitting to some "incidents" and that some people did tend to be afraid of him. However, the stories written about him in more recent years (cf. his Wikipedia entry) do show a more violent and even sinister side. In 2006, the British tabloids had a field day when Guppy, enraged by his wife admitting that Spencer had attempted to seduce her when she lived on his Northamptonshire estate while Guppy "did his time", lured Spencer to his house in Cape Province, South Africa and beat him up very severely. Revenge is perhaps another necessary keyword. Guppy's sources of capital and income remain obscure, it seems.

I have to admit that this well-written book left me with a mostly positive impression of Guppy, whom I had encountered previously, like most people, only in the newspapers. He does have some compassion for the unfortunate. Personally, I find it hard to understand how someone with his obvious intelligence and culture (albeit of Iranian descent) can find much in the backward Muslim way of life, whatever the beauties of language of the Koran. After all, "judge them by their fruits"...At any rate, the view of an Iranian lady with whom I was slightly acquainted in London around the time of Guppy's trial, seems incomplete. He was, she said, "a nice boy"...

I had almost forgotten the Darius Guppy story until a friend of mine reminded me about it recently. So I decided to read Roll the Dice. Like a previous reviewer I thought that the editing left a lot to be desired but this may be the result of the two voices that can be detected in the book. The first voice comes across as the co-writer's or editor's where the style is more journalistic and racy. The second voice seems to be the author's itself, where the style is much more literate and reflective. It is this tension between what the co-author wants him to say and what the man himself wants to write that may account for the rather disjointed writing style and it is here that decent editing would have made a difference. A pity.

Having said this, I found the story immensely entertaining and interesting. Darius does not come across as remotely arrogant but as thoughtful and passionate and driven by conflicting forces.

In fact 'Elizebethan' is a word that springs to mind in considering his adventures - cunning, bold, foolhardy, noble, brave, foolhardy and no doubt sheer mad. All the forces of the police, Lloyds of London, the courts and the British media were unable to break him. He seems at the very least a fascinating man.

Well worth the read and it seems amazing that they haven't made a film of this book yet, especially when we consider how much the man packed in while he was still in his early twenties. Wonder what he's up to now.

Darius Guppy writes his story of crime and deceit as if he were Robin Hood. In fact, his book would have been much more interesting if he would have bothered to speak with those who were assigned to investigate this case in the first place.