‘[A] very well-researched and well-written monograph on a neglected area of working-class social and economic life’
English Historical Review, Vol. 10, No. 489, 1995
‘Clapson brings to life the intriguing and little-known world of popular gambling. Drawing on a variety of sources – including, I was happy to note, the Manchester Jewish Museum’s Oral History archives – he pieces together the vanished world of tip sheets, pitch-and-toss and the bookies’ runner. This book, originally a thesis, is being issued as part of a series of studies of international sport. In a way, this is a pity. The book is relatively jargon-free, but this subject cries out for a more popular treatment. Clapson is clearly the man to do it, and there is no law against university presses making money’.
‘Think of the winnings’, The Jerusalem Post, 12 March 1993
‘A hell of a place. Or rather Paradise completely possessed by serpents’. Such was Lloyd George’s view of Monte Carlo on first witnessing its gambling in 1905. His horrified report to his wife at home was predictable in a Welsh Nonconformist at that time, and reminds us of the major shift in values that has occurred since. It is a change that Mark Clapson’s clearly written, closely researched and well-documented study illuminates at many points’.
Times Literary Supplement, 9 October, 1992