Simon Baker

The gambler’s daily grind

A review of The Ballad of a Small Player, by Lawrence Osborne. An insight into a gambler’s life of soulless grind

[Getty Images/Zoonar RF] 
issue 26 April 2014

  • The Ballad of a Small Player

    Lawrence Osborne

    Hogarth, pp. 257

Lord Doyle is a shrivelled English gambler frittering away his money and destroying his liver in the casinos of Macau. Aptly, since he is in a place filled with mock-Venetian canals and poor reproduction paintings, he himself is a fake: the man is not a real lord, and the money is not his own.

GIF Image

Disagree with half of it, enjoy reading all of it

TRY 3 MONTHS FOR $5
Our magazine articles are for subscribers only. Start your 3-month trial today for just $5 and subscribe to more than one view

Read next

Trending

Samuel Rubinstein

Cambridge can do better than Gina Miller

Oxford, said Matthew Arnold, was “the home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs”. Now Cambridge is giving it a run for its money. Oxford’s chancellor election last year was widely billed as a two-horse race between the elder statesmen Lords Mandelson and Hague; the latter in the end won handily. They both had their hang-ups

More on book review

Also by Simon Baker

Latest

Comments

Join the debate for just £1 a month

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.

Already a subscriber? Log in