Set in the second half of the eighteenth century, Barry Lyndon is the fictional autobiography of an adventurer and rogue. Born into the petty Irish gentry, and outmanoeuvred in his first love-affair, a ruined Barry volunteers for the British army. After seeing service in Germany he deserts and, after a brief spell as a spy, pursues the career of a gambler in the dissolute clubs and courts of Europe. In a determined effort to enter fashionable society he marries a titled heiress but is finally outwitted by her and ends his days in a debtors' prison.