Dubbed ‘The Bounder’ in the 1970s by gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, Luis Sosa Basualdo worked his way through the British upper classes, breaking hearts, extracting money and causing havoc wherever he went.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1945 to a family of humble origin, Luis changed his name and reinvented himself as a polo-playing aristocrat in order to launch a career as an international gigolo. He married a gullible young heiress for her trust fund and scammed Christina Onassis out of over a million dollars. Even the Prince of Wales succumbed to his charms, playing for Luis’s polo team and seeking his advice about his love life. But as the lies and chicanery caught up with him, Luis eventually had to flee the UK, and he spent the last twenty years of his life in Buenos Aires, in and out of rehab, bankrupt and alone. He died in 2020.

The Bounder and Other Scoundrels chronicles Luis’s outrageous life as seen through the eyes of his companion and confidant Marcelo Manrique de Acuña. Characterised by rivalry over everything from their skill on the polo field to their prowess in bed, their long friendship flourished in a bygone era of glamour and privilege, somehow surviving the hypocrisy and deceit of the jet set with which they mixed. This is not just a story of extravagance and scandal in high places; it is also the salutary tale of two friends, born in the same year in the same city, who ended up on very different paths.