Darius Guppy

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Darius Guppy's autobiography - Roll the Dice
Darius Guppy's autobiography - Roll the Dice

Darius Guppy is a British expatriate who, together with Benedict Marsh, was convicted of fraud, theft and false accounting in February 1993. Guppy was jailed for staging a faked jewel robbery and claiming £1.8 million from the insurers, part of London's Lloyd's insurance market.[1] [2]

Darius' mother was the author and singer Shusha Guppy, who died in March 2008.[3] On his father's side, he is a descendant of Lechmere Guppy, the naturalist who discovered the eponymous fish.

Darius was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, Eton College, and Magdalen College, Oxford where he got a first class degree in History and French. In his second year, he became a member of the Piers Gaveston Society, as well as the Bullingdon Club.[4] He was the best man at Earl Spencer's wedding to model Victoria Lockwood, his first wife; Earl Spencer was his best man in return. Darius was a close friend of the Conservative MP Boris Johnson,[5] as well as Count Gottfried von Bismarck.

The Daily Mail reports that Darius Guppy's acts of retribution are legendary since, according to Boris Johnson, he lives by a "Homeric code of honour, loyalty and revenge".[6] He brawled with the brother of Princess Diana, Earl Spencer, to defend the honour of his wife Patricia.[6] At university, he famously engaged in a feud with a landlord.[6] In 1990, he undertook to beat up a tabloid journalist for investigating his background.[6] The jewel robbery too was an act of vengeance, since Lloyd's ruined his father and the family fortune in their great financial crisis of 1988-96 which bankrupted many names.[7]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] References

  1. ^ "2 London Jewelers are convicted of faking Manhattan Gem heist", Boston Globe, February 14, 1993. 
  2. ^ Len Read. "HOW ROYALS, ARISTOS AND TARTS FELL UNDER THE SPELL OF ...", Sunday Mirror, April 7, 1996. 
  3. ^ Shusha Guppy, The Times, March 26, 2008, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3619908.ece> 
  4. ^ Richard Alleyne. "Oxford hellraisers politely trash a pub", Daily Telegraph, 04/12/2004. 
  5. ^ John-Paul Flintoff (March 16, 2008), Boris Johnson: Maybe it's because he's a ponderer, The Sunday Times, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3537554.ece> 
  6. ^ a b c d Fiona Barton. "The revenge of deadly Darius", Daily Mail, 18th August 2006. 
  7. ^ Guppy, Darius (1996). Roll the Dice. Blake Publishing. ISBN 1-85782-159-9. 
  8. ^ Described in Publishers Weekly, Jan 27, 1997 v244 n4 p93
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