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Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins
Ever since the Kray twins invited John Pearson to write their 'official' biography more than forty years ago, he has been obsessed with them. After they were jailed in 1969 for thirty years for murder, Pearson's biography The Profession of Violence enjoyed a cult following among the young and was said to be the most popular book in H.M.'s prisons, after the Bible.
Ron died in 1995. Reg followed him five years later, and both of their funerals drew crowds on a scale unknown for film stars, let alone for two departed murderers. Since then, far from fading with their death, public fascination with the twins has never flagged. Their clothes and memorabilia are sold at auction like religious relics. Ron's childlike prison paintings fetch more money than those of many well-known artists. And people still refer to them like popular celebrities. Why?
This is the question Pearson asked himself, and over the past three years he has been re-examining their history, unearthing much previously unknown material, and has come to some fascinating conclusions. Notorious reveals new facts about the Krays' tortured relationship as identical twins; a relationship which helped predestine them to a life of crime; a relationship that made them utterly unlike any other major criminals. Pearson has discovered two new and unsuspected murders, along with fresh light on the killings of George Cornell and Jack 'the Hat' McVitie. There are facts about the twins' obsession with publicity, and how far this made them 'actor criminals' murdering for notoriety. Most riveting of all are the chapters which reveal how Ron Kray caused a major sexual scandal in which a prime minister, together with other leading politicians, condoned the most outrageous establishment cover-up in British politics since the war.
Notorious contains many more surprises, but the one thing that emerges is that the Kray twins were not only stranger but also far more important than anyone ever suspected. Fascination with them will forever remain; they will never lose their role as the immortal murderers.
Ron died in 1995. Reg followed him five years later, and both of their funerals drew crowds on a scale unknown for film stars, let alone for two departed murderers. Since then, far from fading with their death, public fascination with the twins has never flagged. Their clothes and memorabilia are sold at auction like religious relics. Ron's childlike prison paintings fetch more money than those of many well-known artists. And people still refer to them like popular celebrities. Why?
This is the question Pearson asked himself, and over the past three years he has been re-examining their history, unearthing much previously unknown material, and has come to some fascinating conclusions. Notorious reveals new facts about the Krays' tortured relationship as identical twins; a relationship which helped predestine them to a life of crime; a relationship that made them utterly unlike any other major criminals. Pearson has discovered two new and unsuspected murders, along with fresh light on the killings of George Cornell and Jack 'the Hat' McVitie. There are facts about the twins' obsession with publicity, and how far this made them 'actor criminals' murdering for notoriety. Most riveting of all are the chapters which reveal how Ron Kray caused a major sexual scandal in which a prime minister, together with other leading politicians, condoned the most outrageous establishment cover-up in British politics since the war.
Notorious contains many more surprises, but the one thing that emerges is that the Kray twins were not only stranger but also far more important than anyone ever suspected. Fascination with them will forever remain; they will never lose their role as the immortal murderers.
400 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2010
5 people are currently reading
161 people want to read
About the author
John George Pearson
30 books24 followersJohn Pearson was a writer best associated with James Bond creator Ian Fleming. He was Fleming's assistant at the London Sunday Times and would go on to write the first biography of Ian Fleming, 1966's The Life of Ian Fleming. Pearson also wrote "true-crime" biographies, such as The Profession of Violence: an East End gang story about the rise and fall of the Kray twins.
Pearson would also become the third official James Bond author of the adult-Bond series, writing in 1973 James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, a first-person biography of the fictional agent James Bond. Although the canonical nature of this book has been debated by Bond fans since it was published, it was officially authorized by Glidrose Publications, the official publisher of the James Bond chronicles. Glidrose reportedly considered commissioning Pearson to write a new series of Bond novels in the 1970s, but nothing came of this.
Pearson was commissioned by Donald Campbell to chronicle his successful attempt on the Land Speed Record in 1964 in Bluebird CN7, resulting in the book Bluebird and the Dead Lake.
Pearson wrote the non-fiction book, The Gamblers, an account about the group of gamblers who made up, what was known as the Clermont Set, which included John Aspinall, James Goldsmith and Lord Lucan. The film rights to the book were purchased by Warner Bros. in 2006. He also wrote Façades, the first full-scale biography of the literary Sitwell siblings, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, published in 1978.
Pearson also wrote five novels:
Gone To Timbuctoo (1962) - winner of the Author's Club First Novel Award
James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 (1973)
The Bellamy Saga (1976)
Biggles: The Authorized Biography (1978)
The Kindness of Dr. Avicenna (1982).
Pearson passed away on November 13, 2021. He was ninety one at the time of his death.
Pearson would also become the third official James Bond author of the adult-Bond series, writing in 1973 James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, a first-person biography of the fictional agent James Bond. Although the canonical nature of this book has been debated by Bond fans since it was published, it was officially authorized by Glidrose Publications, the official publisher of the James Bond chronicles. Glidrose reportedly considered commissioning Pearson to write a new series of Bond novels in the 1970s, but nothing came of this.
Pearson was commissioned by Donald Campbell to chronicle his successful attempt on the Land Speed Record in 1964 in Bluebird CN7, resulting in the book Bluebird and the Dead Lake.
Pearson wrote the non-fiction book, The Gamblers, an account about the group of gamblers who made up, what was known as the Clermont Set, which included John Aspinall, James Goldsmith and Lord Lucan. The film rights to the book were purchased by Warner Bros. in 2006. He also wrote Façades, the first full-scale biography of the literary Sitwell siblings, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, published in 1978.
Pearson also wrote five novels:
Gone To Timbuctoo (1962) - winner of the Author's Club First Novel Award
James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 (1973)
The Bellamy Saga (1976)
Biggles: The Authorized Biography (1978)
The Kindness of Dr. Avicenna (1982).
Pearson passed away on November 13, 2021. He was ninety one at the time of his death.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 28, 2014
This is quite an angry book from a man who, clearly with some regret, kick-started the popular fashion for true crime in the United Kingdom with his first biography of the Kray Twins back in the 1960s.
'The Profession of Violence' is, like the 'The Wicker Man' in film and 'The Communist Manifesto' in politics, an example of the remorselessness of the law of unintended consequences.
This book should be read as the 'most considered' account of the Kray Twins thirty five years on but also as an exercise in self-reflexion on the popular biographers' art by a doyen of the trade.
His anger may be a little with himself but it is most reasonably expressed as anger at the two sides of the Kray Twins' coin.
There is an anger with both the sheer violence and (certainly in Ron Kray's case) psychopathy of the Krays' world and with the way that the establishment connived at their celebrity game in order to avoid scandal.
Sometimes, it is hard to know which is more evil - the thuggery of the Krays making their way up from the slums or the protection of truly psychopathic, narcissistic and weak men like Driberg and Boothby by their own class in both major parties.
If I had to choose a poster boy for true social evil, I am afraid that I would have to choose Arnold, Lord Goodman over Reg Kray any day. Goodman epitomises the intellectual manipulation of power and rules to protect a pack of social jackals - Ron's perverted desires seem small feed in comparison.
These ruminations are not merely historical. As we write, good policemen and women and good journalists - notably those at www.exaronews.com with whom I am proud to be associated but also many others - are digging in the slime of similar cover-ups related to child abuse only a decade or two later.
The child abuse scandals of the 1970s and 1980s (and perhaps beyond as they morph into internet rings) can now be seen as natural extensions of a total world of abuse in which the Krays are really a mere incident.
What underlay the exploitative evil of the Krays was the convergence of a culture of sexual repression (in terms of homosexuality) where the laws were not enforced where they existed, a hypocritical ruling order where 'bad' conduct needed to be repressed but was otherwise accepted amongst their own and the usefulness of outsiders, raised in social neglect to be totally self-regarding, as allies and tools.
This was a culture that pragmatically kept a lid on things that perhaps could not have been ordered in any other way given the society and politics of the country but which became extremely deviant at its dark edges.
Narscisitic gay psychopaths converged on one another and built networks and alliances which the 'establishment', where it knew of these things, preferred to turn a blind eye. It became too easy for the deviants to exploit the vulnerable and to feel that they could do so with impunity, This is Poliakoff country.
For be in no doubt that the Krays were 'peculiar' in many senses. There are other gangland familes and networks which are perhaps only now being addressed by the formation of the National Crime Agency but these never sought the celebrity of the Krays. They were and are primarily 'business men' like the mafia, not 'legends'.
Pearson is good on the influence of the American gangster film and the allure of the mafia (this was the mafia's high point of global influence) for Reg and Ron but it is clear that our native born thugs were little more than occasionally useful tools for their sophisticated counterparts from New York - somewhat of a metaphor for the British relationship with the US after Suez!
The only caveat I would have with the book is that the psychological profiling of the Twins, while plausible in many ways, is over-played.
Pearson is part-establishment himself - he was famously biographer of Ian Fleming and 'James Bond' - and he remains, like all his journalistic ilk, rather weak on the 'sociology' of resistance to the system implicit in organised crime.
Yes, organised crime is wolf-like, opportunistic and psychopathic but it does not arise from nothing. These systems are businesses organised by the more or less intelligent to provide real services for alienated and bulied populations as well as cruel and vicious exploitative ones.
Even the cruelty and exploitation is more morally ambiguous than any abstract believer in justice may think. Famously, Capone did more to eliminate adulteration of milk for children than the lack-lustre local government.
If the State dumps disturbed kids in hell-holes and abandons them, then being noticed by gangsters and given a chance to relieve their misery or get money may still be preferable to being trained to be a grunt in the military or a shelf-stacker in a retail chain.
Even sex workers who were introduced to the 'industry' by these grim routes are not simple victims but have sometimes seized a chance to use their assets for lives that they would now consider themselves to have chosen.
Indeed, many now fear that criminalisation of their trade by do-gooding establishment dim-wits whose cruelty is no less than the gangsters will slash their incomes and throw them back into the hands of the underworld.
Gang and state, state and gang, sometimes two sides of the same coin, drones and pub-shootings, taxes and protection money, the law of the street and no snitching or the law of the state and no whistleblowing.
The real route to crime of the Krays was their own natures as violent psychopaths but in the context of localities completely abandoned by the middle classes but where enough of the middle classes still wanted things that their own 'values' denied them.
Repressive cultures combined with class neglect inevitable lead to collusive relationships between weak ruling classes and the wolves at the bottom.
In this case, we had the collusion extending to the narratives of eager journalists, photographers and film-makers who wished to tell the tale in terms of glamour - of Camelot, if you like.
Pearson cannot be accused of this - or, if he once glamourised the Krays, it was out of youthful naivete. This book makes ample amends.
He writes well. The account of the murder of Frank Mitchell is genuinely moving and has all the hall-marks of a Greek tragedy.
Even the Krays, without moral complicity (and when he is not getting angry and spouting cod-psychology), come across as complex persons rather than mere monsters. That is no mean achievement.
He adds as an appendix photographs of his own correspondence from Ron Kray in prison. His poor education, street intelligence and sentimentality cast a different light on the man without diminishing the horror of his conduct as killer and exponent of GBH.
But the question remains, while other gangsters run multinational businesses and prepare for war with the National Crime Agency, there is no doubt that the Krays are not forgotten in the white working classes of London, even today.
Their funerals were pure theatre, 20,000-40,000 being prepared to attend the last one. Their criminal associates and rivals have given themselves pensions on well-selling true crime memoirs.
Figures like Freddy Foreman and 'Mad' Frankie Fraser have iconic status and even some sympathy when true tales of 'toughness' in standing up to the old prison system are recounted.
If people can think like that - as they think of the murderous Salvatore Giuliani in Sicily - then something is going on that must be understood before it is condemned by armchair moralists.
Recent 'cop killings' in the UK have exposed a culture of hate for the police at the margins of society. The official news narrative is countered with a social media narrative of deep resentment and a preparedness for self-immolation that reminds one of Jean-Paul Belmondo's last scene in 'Breathless'.
There is a dialectic here between popular culture (film and now video games) and criminality that is not a simple one of cause and effect. The 'rage' in the machine is prior to the popular culture which lives off it - the popular culture merely gives it theatrical form in real life.
Millions lose themselves in the rage or the fantasy without acting on it in the world. A few are so filled with anger and resentment that they code their suicidal actions in the language of the Joker or Get Carter.
This should not be taken overly seriously but it should also not be ignored or over-simplified. Something is going on 'out there' and the London Riots, a narrative heavily suppressed and rewritten in the last two years, are part of the story.
John Pearson gives us no answers here but his personal re-evaluation of his own relationship with these iconic organised crime figures must be added to the raw material from which an analysis will come.
And not only in relation to the origins of resentment but also to the handling of collusion.
The Boothby-Driberg scandal involving the undoubted sustained sexual exploitation of teenage boys must be put in the scales with Kincora as a sexual exploitation story in which some people at very high levels were collusive and complicit in covering up what took place.
As we write, child abuse investigations have now extended from the celebrities who were permitted excesses by a 'see no evil' BBC to the care home system which we have all known for far too long have been grooming grounds for the underground sex industry.
The question is not the free choice of disturbed youngsters to engage in that industry as their way into the world but the collusion of their carers in driving them into that world without informed consent and of sections of the political and law enforcement community in protecting and even providing custom.
Beyond that, despite the publicity, the 'establishment' still shies clear of investigating the cruelties and brutalities not only within the Catholic Church but other institutional structures that are politically powerful.
Only this weekend, the BBC reports our much-loved RAF finding itself embroiled in an old scandal. In short, this culture of exploitation was endemic at the margins of institutional life and the victims have been ignored and bullied for far too long.
In this brutal context of humiliation and abuse, the Krays start to look like minor excesses in a rotten system, even perhaps as a form of undirected revenge by the humiliated as a class on their ultimate humiliators, the worst parts of the ruling order.
So, we may expect attempts at cover-ups and damage limitation (and weaselly demands for 'closure' and 'drawing a line under the past'), but the story is out.
Perhaps, at the end of all this, we will see the gangsters at the top and those at the bottom for what they really are ... somehow, I think both sets of hyena will survive this crisis and reappear in a different form. For that is the way of the world ...
'The Profession of Violence' is, like the 'The Wicker Man' in film and 'The Communist Manifesto' in politics, an example of the remorselessness of the law of unintended consequences.
This book should be read as the 'most considered' account of the Kray Twins thirty five years on but also as an exercise in self-reflexion on the popular biographers' art by a doyen of the trade.
His anger may be a little with himself but it is most reasonably expressed as anger at the two sides of the Kray Twins' coin.
There is an anger with both the sheer violence and (certainly in Ron Kray's case) psychopathy of the Krays' world and with the way that the establishment connived at their celebrity game in order to avoid scandal.
Sometimes, it is hard to know which is more evil - the thuggery of the Krays making their way up from the slums or the protection of truly psychopathic, narcissistic and weak men like Driberg and Boothby by their own class in both major parties.
If I had to choose a poster boy for true social evil, I am afraid that I would have to choose Arnold, Lord Goodman over Reg Kray any day. Goodman epitomises the intellectual manipulation of power and rules to protect a pack of social jackals - Ron's perverted desires seem small feed in comparison.
These ruminations are not merely historical. As we write, good policemen and women and good journalists - notably those at www.exaronews.com with whom I am proud to be associated but also many others - are digging in the slime of similar cover-ups related to child abuse only a decade or two later.
The child abuse scandals of the 1970s and 1980s (and perhaps beyond as they morph into internet rings) can now be seen as natural extensions of a total world of abuse in which the Krays are really a mere incident.
What underlay the exploitative evil of the Krays was the convergence of a culture of sexual repression (in terms of homosexuality) where the laws were not enforced where they existed, a hypocritical ruling order where 'bad' conduct needed to be repressed but was otherwise accepted amongst their own and the usefulness of outsiders, raised in social neglect to be totally self-regarding, as allies and tools.
This was a culture that pragmatically kept a lid on things that perhaps could not have been ordered in any other way given the society and politics of the country but which became extremely deviant at its dark edges.
Narscisitic gay psychopaths converged on one another and built networks and alliances which the 'establishment', where it knew of these things, preferred to turn a blind eye. It became too easy for the deviants to exploit the vulnerable and to feel that they could do so with impunity, This is Poliakoff country.
For be in no doubt that the Krays were 'peculiar' in many senses. There are other gangland familes and networks which are perhaps only now being addressed by the formation of the National Crime Agency but these never sought the celebrity of the Krays. They were and are primarily 'business men' like the mafia, not 'legends'.
Pearson is good on the influence of the American gangster film and the allure of the mafia (this was the mafia's high point of global influence) for Reg and Ron but it is clear that our native born thugs were little more than occasionally useful tools for their sophisticated counterparts from New York - somewhat of a metaphor for the British relationship with the US after Suez!
The only caveat I would have with the book is that the psychological profiling of the Twins, while plausible in many ways, is over-played.
Pearson is part-establishment himself - he was famously biographer of Ian Fleming and 'James Bond' - and he remains, like all his journalistic ilk, rather weak on the 'sociology' of resistance to the system implicit in organised crime.
Yes, organised crime is wolf-like, opportunistic and psychopathic but it does not arise from nothing. These systems are businesses organised by the more or less intelligent to provide real services for alienated and bulied populations as well as cruel and vicious exploitative ones.
Even the cruelty and exploitation is more morally ambiguous than any abstract believer in justice may think. Famously, Capone did more to eliminate adulteration of milk for children than the lack-lustre local government.
If the State dumps disturbed kids in hell-holes and abandons them, then being noticed by gangsters and given a chance to relieve their misery or get money may still be preferable to being trained to be a grunt in the military or a shelf-stacker in a retail chain.
Even sex workers who were introduced to the 'industry' by these grim routes are not simple victims but have sometimes seized a chance to use their assets for lives that they would now consider themselves to have chosen.
Indeed, many now fear that criminalisation of their trade by do-gooding establishment dim-wits whose cruelty is no less than the gangsters will slash their incomes and throw them back into the hands of the underworld.
Gang and state, state and gang, sometimes two sides of the same coin, drones and pub-shootings, taxes and protection money, the law of the street and no snitching or the law of the state and no whistleblowing.
The real route to crime of the Krays was their own natures as violent psychopaths but in the context of localities completely abandoned by the middle classes but where enough of the middle classes still wanted things that their own 'values' denied them.
Repressive cultures combined with class neglect inevitable lead to collusive relationships between weak ruling classes and the wolves at the bottom.
In this case, we had the collusion extending to the narratives of eager journalists, photographers and film-makers who wished to tell the tale in terms of glamour - of Camelot, if you like.
Pearson cannot be accused of this - or, if he once glamourised the Krays, it was out of youthful naivete. This book makes ample amends.
He writes well. The account of the murder of Frank Mitchell is genuinely moving and has all the hall-marks of a Greek tragedy.
Even the Krays, without moral complicity (and when he is not getting angry and spouting cod-psychology), come across as complex persons rather than mere monsters. That is no mean achievement.
He adds as an appendix photographs of his own correspondence from Ron Kray in prison. His poor education, street intelligence and sentimentality cast a different light on the man without diminishing the horror of his conduct as killer and exponent of GBH.
But the question remains, while other gangsters run multinational businesses and prepare for war with the National Crime Agency, there is no doubt that the Krays are not forgotten in the white working classes of London, even today.
Their funerals were pure theatre, 20,000-40,000 being prepared to attend the last one. Their criminal associates and rivals have given themselves pensions on well-selling true crime memoirs.
Figures like Freddy Foreman and 'Mad' Frankie Fraser have iconic status and even some sympathy when true tales of 'toughness' in standing up to the old prison system are recounted.
If people can think like that - as they think of the murderous Salvatore Giuliani in Sicily - then something is going on that must be understood before it is condemned by armchair moralists.
Recent 'cop killings' in the UK have exposed a culture of hate for the police at the margins of society. The official news narrative is countered with a social media narrative of deep resentment and a preparedness for self-immolation that reminds one of Jean-Paul Belmondo's last scene in 'Breathless'.
There is a dialectic here between popular culture (film and now video games) and criminality that is not a simple one of cause and effect. The 'rage' in the machine is prior to the popular culture which lives off it - the popular culture merely gives it theatrical form in real life.
Millions lose themselves in the rage or the fantasy without acting on it in the world. A few are so filled with anger and resentment that they code their suicidal actions in the language of the Joker or Get Carter.
This should not be taken overly seriously but it should also not be ignored or over-simplified. Something is going on 'out there' and the London Riots, a narrative heavily suppressed and rewritten in the last two years, are part of the story.
John Pearson gives us no answers here but his personal re-evaluation of his own relationship with these iconic organised crime figures must be added to the raw material from which an analysis will come.
And not only in relation to the origins of resentment but also to the handling of collusion.
The Boothby-Driberg scandal involving the undoubted sustained sexual exploitation of teenage boys must be put in the scales with Kincora as a sexual exploitation story in which some people at very high levels were collusive and complicit in covering up what took place.
As we write, child abuse investigations have now extended from the celebrities who were permitted excesses by a 'see no evil' BBC to the care home system which we have all known for far too long have been grooming grounds for the underground sex industry.
The question is not the free choice of disturbed youngsters to engage in that industry as their way into the world but the collusion of their carers in driving them into that world without informed consent and of sections of the political and law enforcement community in protecting and even providing custom.
Beyond that, despite the publicity, the 'establishment' still shies clear of investigating the cruelties and brutalities not only within the Catholic Church but other institutional structures that are politically powerful.
Only this weekend, the BBC reports our much-loved RAF finding itself embroiled in an old scandal. In short, this culture of exploitation was endemic at the margins of institutional life and the victims have been ignored and bullied for far too long.
In this brutal context of humiliation and abuse, the Krays start to look like minor excesses in a rotten system, even perhaps as a form of undirected revenge by the humiliated as a class on their ultimate humiliators, the worst parts of the ruling order.
So, we may expect attempts at cover-ups and damage limitation (and weaselly demands for 'closure' and 'drawing a line under the past'), but the story is out.
Perhaps, at the end of all this, we will see the gangsters at the top and those at the bottom for what they really are ... somehow, I think both sets of hyena will survive this crisis and reappear in a different form. For that is the way of the world ...
August 31, 2025
Legend, written- based on the book by John Pearson- and directed by Brian Helgeland
A different version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... and http://realini.blogspot.ro/
Legend is a film to remember.
The actor in the leading role should have been nominated for an Academy Award –and he was, but not for this part.
Tom Hardy deserves an Academy Award, for his performances have proved he is a wonderful actor in different types of character.
He is:
- John Fitzgerald in The Revenant
- Max Rockatansky in Mad Max
- Ivan Locke in Locke- a very interesting proposal that is carried all along by Tom Hardy
In Legend, he has a serious challenge in coping with two different roles, even if these are twin brothers:
- Reggie and Ron Kray
They are both mobsters, leaders of an “organized crime group”
But they could not be any different.
It is not just in sexual orientation, where Ronnie is homosexual- active, “giving it” as he likes to emphasize- and Reggie is heterosexual.
Their views of the business, partners and pretty much else are often clashing.
Reggie is attracted to Frances Shea, whose brother is also a criminal, but she is as nice, honest and against crime as anyone can be.
The brothers have a fight over her.
As mentioned, not because Ronnie would have any inclination towards her- as was the case in say, East of Eden.
On the contrary, this very outré and outrageous gangster is insulting the woman that his brother loves…
- Well, that loving part is more complicated
- Thomas Mann has this character that casts a shadow over the issue
- And there is also Charlie, played by Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor who says:
- “In love is temporary”
As is familiar, gangster groups clash over territory, money, rivalry and so much more.
One particular fight is very violent and both Krays take part. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with about ten enemies.
Ronnie is the wild card and he interferes in the life of the club that they manage- a façade in some ways.
Much more cerebral and wise- when compared with his twin brother, for he is otherwise a mobster- Reggie is the preferred partner.
When the American Goodfellas come to London to see how they can cooperate with the Krays, there is a funny scene.
Well, perhaps humorous, but also embarrassing, retrograde and paradoxical.
The Mafiosi have been- I guess they still are- not just conservative, but fundamentalists and racist, sexist in their attitude.
They thought that killing people is just about acceptable, together with stealing, philandering, lying and all the other sins from the Bible.
- But when it came to homosexuality, oh, no!
- That was a capital sin, outrageous and unacceptable- at least in the portraits we have of these wise guys
So when the Italian American gangsters are told by the outlandish Ronnie that he prefers boys over girls they are shocked.
- Well, Angelo Bruno that is, portrayed by Chazz Palminteri
The mob from across the nation is unhappy with what it learns about the unpredictable and strange Ronnie.
And they ask his brother to act upon this.
- Love, fight, live, rule like a legend
This is the appropriate tagline for this good film, with a fabulous actor in the lead role and an equally excellent supporting cast.
A different version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... and http://realini.blogspot.ro/
Legend is a film to remember.
The actor in the leading role should have been nominated for an Academy Award –and he was, but not for this part.
Tom Hardy deserves an Academy Award, for his performances have proved he is a wonderful actor in different types of character.
He is:
- John Fitzgerald in The Revenant
- Max Rockatansky in Mad Max
- Ivan Locke in Locke- a very interesting proposal that is carried all along by Tom Hardy
In Legend, he has a serious challenge in coping with two different roles, even if these are twin brothers:
- Reggie and Ron Kray
They are both mobsters, leaders of an “organized crime group”
But they could not be any different.
It is not just in sexual orientation, where Ronnie is homosexual- active, “giving it” as he likes to emphasize- and Reggie is heterosexual.
Their views of the business, partners and pretty much else are often clashing.
Reggie is attracted to Frances Shea, whose brother is also a criminal, but she is as nice, honest and against crime as anyone can be.
The brothers have a fight over her.
As mentioned, not because Ronnie would have any inclination towards her- as was the case in say, East of Eden.
On the contrary, this very outré and outrageous gangster is insulting the woman that his brother loves…
- Well, that loving part is more complicated
- Thomas Mann has this character that casts a shadow over the issue
- And there is also Charlie, played by Jack Nicholson in Prizzi’s Honor who says:
- “In love is temporary”
As is familiar, gangster groups clash over territory, money, rivalry and so much more.
One particular fight is very violent and both Krays take part. Fighting shoulder to shoulder with about ten enemies.
Ronnie is the wild card and he interferes in the life of the club that they manage- a façade in some ways.
Much more cerebral and wise- when compared with his twin brother, for he is otherwise a mobster- Reggie is the preferred partner.
When the American Goodfellas come to London to see how they can cooperate with the Krays, there is a funny scene.
Well, perhaps humorous, but also embarrassing, retrograde and paradoxical.
The Mafiosi have been- I guess they still are- not just conservative, but fundamentalists and racist, sexist in their attitude.
They thought that killing people is just about acceptable, together with stealing, philandering, lying and all the other sins from the Bible.
- But when it came to homosexuality, oh, no!
- That was a capital sin, outrageous and unacceptable- at least in the portraits we have of these wise guys
So when the Italian American gangsters are told by the outlandish Ronnie that he prefers boys over girls they are shocked.
- Well, Angelo Bruno that is, portrayed by Chazz Palminteri
The mob from across the nation is unhappy with what it learns about the unpredictable and strange Ronnie.
And they ask his brother to act upon this.
- Love, fight, live, rule like a legend
This is the appropriate tagline for this good film, with a fabulous actor in the lead role and an equally excellent supporting cast.
May 13, 2025
Very comprehensive look at the Krays legacy
This is the latest in the 3 book series by the same author about the krays. It's linear, in depth and exceptionally well researched. I'm looking forward to reading the previous 2 now.
This is the latest in the 3 book series by the same author about the krays. It's linear, in depth and exceptionally well researched. I'm looking forward to reading the previous 2 now.
November 13, 2018
Outstanding.
May 31, 2015
Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins by John Pearson I guess all of us have heard the name The Krays, for most of our lives if you are older and all of your lives if you are younger.
Talking about the Kray twins is like talking about The Beatles. There is so much already written, known, believed, suspected or guessed at already, albeit true or false, that attempting to write anything new or interesting or intelligent is a very brave undertaking.John Pearson was the "official" biographer of the Krays. They asked him to write their story after Truman Capote refused!
This is his second biography of the twins. He wrote the first one, A Profession of Violence when they were near the peak of their "success". After they read it he went into hiding because the twins did not like it and they were going to kill him. But within a short period of time the book became an outrageous best seller and that made the the name Kray a household word in England. So they forgave him because the book gave them what they wanted. They wanted to be famous.There were two problems with the twins. They were homosexual at a time and a place where that was the last thing you would want to be. Ronnie Kray was a psychopathic paranoid schizophrenic and a very dangerous man.Not only did Ronnie think everyone was out to kill him, he made a list of who they were and systematically worked his way down that list and killed them first. When he took his meds he was OK, which was most of the time. From everything in the book life around Ronnie was fraught.I am not going to run through the many apocryphal Kray stories that have served to glorify their existence. This book is full of them, but that is not the point of the book. This book paints a picture that is based in a time and place that allowed the Krays to become what they were destined to be. This book allows anyone who reads it to understand not only how the Krays came about but how they got to be so famous and how they managed to mess it all up.Of the two brothers Reggie was more circumspect about his sexuality and tried sadly to become "straight". Ronnie by contrast came out with a statement that reads like this, "I am a giver see, not a taker, so I am not a queer, I am a 'omosexual". Ronnie was into young men but was not that fussy. The Krays were famous during the "swinging sixties" and Ronnie took copious notes and the occasional photograph which "might come in handy later". He kept all these in a small brown suitcase at his mother's house. His most famous partner was Lord Boothby and it was this famous liaison that gave the Krays an opportunity not seen since until the recent Jimmy Saville scandal.There was a famous showdown between the Daily Mirror and the establishment. The Mirror claimed to have photos detailing a peer of the realm's involvement with a well known gangster. When push came to shove the entire British establishment faced the Mirror down and got them to pay out a small fortune for libel to Lord Boothby despite their claims being completely factual.This in effect meant that the Krays were untouchable because they could prove that the state had lied to the public. This was their golden chance and they took it with both hands and pulled hard. The police left them alone for over 3 years. On the odd occasion when the police started asking questions, Lord Boothby would raise questions in the House of Lords about Police harassment.I mentioned the Jimmy Saville affair because he too was reputedly tied into the sordid procuring ring that served both house of parliament at the time. On that subject the depravity is endless.Interestingly, at the end of their time at large when they sat through the court hearings of their once friends and acolytes giving evidence against them. These were the trials that put them away for the rest of their lives and yet they never gave away the secret of the big lie perpetrated by the establishment over the Lord Boothby affair.Whilst this would have blown the lid off many things it would not have saved them and they were within a hairs breadth of achieving another of their main goals. Why become remembered as as a pair of homosexual gangsters? when they could remain silent in court of and become known as the most ruthless pair of criminals ever seen in England.This is John Pearson's revisit to the myth and legend of the Kray twins. This book is incredibly well written given the enormous amount of material available, and what could have become just a massive list of events that glorified the Krays, this book actually leads to some kind of understanding of them as humans, of the time in which they lived and the place that gave rise to them. A formidable achievement in anyone's terms.Footnote: In London to this very day there is graffiti and street art being created that continues to maintain the legend of the Krays. They have achieved their final goal and have truly have become immortal.
Talking about the Kray twins is like talking about The Beatles. There is so much already written, known, believed, suspected or guessed at already, albeit true or false, that attempting to write anything new or interesting or intelligent is a very brave undertaking.John Pearson was the "official" biographer of the Krays. They asked him to write their story after Truman Capote refused!
This is his second biography of the twins. He wrote the first one, A Profession of Violence when they were near the peak of their "success". After they read it he went into hiding because the twins did not like it and they were going to kill him. But within a short period of time the book became an outrageous best seller and that made the the name Kray a household word in England. So they forgave him because the book gave them what they wanted. They wanted to be famous.There were two problems with the twins. They were homosexual at a time and a place where that was the last thing you would want to be. Ronnie Kray was a psychopathic paranoid schizophrenic and a very dangerous man.Not only did Ronnie think everyone was out to kill him, he made a list of who they were and systematically worked his way down that list and killed them first. When he took his meds he was OK, which was most of the time. From everything in the book life around Ronnie was fraught.I am not going to run through the many apocryphal Kray stories that have served to glorify their existence. This book is full of them, but that is not the point of the book. This book paints a picture that is based in a time and place that allowed the Krays to become what they were destined to be. This book allows anyone who reads it to understand not only how the Krays came about but how they got to be so famous and how they managed to mess it all up.Of the two brothers Reggie was more circumspect about his sexuality and tried sadly to become "straight". Ronnie by contrast came out with a statement that reads like this, "I am a giver see, not a taker, so I am not a queer, I am a 'omosexual". Ronnie was into young men but was not that fussy. The Krays were famous during the "swinging sixties" and Ronnie took copious notes and the occasional photograph which "might come in handy later". He kept all these in a small brown suitcase at his mother's house. His most famous partner was Lord Boothby and it was this famous liaison that gave the Krays an opportunity not seen since until the recent Jimmy Saville scandal.There was a famous showdown between the Daily Mirror and the establishment. The Mirror claimed to have photos detailing a peer of the realm's involvement with a well known gangster. When push came to shove the entire British establishment faced the Mirror down and got them to pay out a small fortune for libel to Lord Boothby despite their claims being completely factual.This in effect meant that the Krays were untouchable because they could prove that the state had lied to the public. This was their golden chance and they took it with both hands and pulled hard. The police left them alone for over 3 years. On the odd occasion when the police started asking questions, Lord Boothby would raise questions in the House of Lords about Police harassment.I mentioned the Jimmy Saville affair because he too was reputedly tied into the sordid procuring ring that served both house of parliament at the time. On that subject the depravity is endless.Interestingly, at the end of their time at large when they sat through the court hearings of their once friends and acolytes giving evidence against them. These were the trials that put them away for the rest of their lives and yet they never gave away the secret of the big lie perpetrated by the establishment over the Lord Boothby affair.Whilst this would have blown the lid off many things it would not have saved them and they were within a hairs breadth of achieving another of their main goals. Why become remembered as as a pair of homosexual gangsters? when they could remain silent in court of and become known as the most ruthless pair of criminals ever seen in England.This is John Pearson's revisit to the myth and legend of the Kray twins. This book is incredibly well written given the enormous amount of material available, and what could have become just a massive list of events that glorified the Krays, this book actually leads to some kind of understanding of them as humans, of the time in which they lived and the place that gave rise to them. A formidable achievement in anyone's terms.Footnote: In London to this very day there is graffiti and street art being created that continues to maintain the legend of the Krays. They have achieved their final goal and have truly have become immortal.
October 9, 2014
Having seen the The Krays movie starring Martin and Gary Kemp as Reggie and Ronnie respectively, this book by John Pearson is the ultimate, definitive take on the Twins. The film, is not bad for a brief overview but to understand the complexities of the Twins, this book is a must read. The author, who spent time with the Twins before they were jailed, is able to capture brutality but more importantly the nuances issues relating to the Twins very well such as their discordant Twin gene and Ronnie’s schizophrenia which in the film starring the Kemp twins isn’t really discussed in the depth that it needs to be to fully understand Ronnie’s mind. It also shows why the Twins were untouchable for a period of time due to Ronnie’s relationship with Lord Boothby and the big cover up conducted jointly by the Labour and Conservative party. The book highlights the other murders the Twins were involved in besides the publicised ones of George Cornell and Jack McVitie (Frank Mitchell, Mad Teddy Smith). It left me as a reader, difficult to judging the Twins and their legacy, on the completion of the book. On one hand, normally, the barbarity and thought processes of them (especially Ronnie) would be alarming and frightening. Yet in some way, I found myself drawn in by the allure as Twin gangster brothers. If they were not twins, would they capture that same attention? I’m not so sure but they worked damn hard to make sure they will be remembered and with a new movie set to come out soon, starring Tom Hardy, it certainly seems they will have the lasting legacy they longed for.
December 31, 2015
Interesting insight. I've read books about the Krays, but this one seem to be more detailed. It added some information that I didn't know.
April 10, 2016
Not one of the best reads about the krays but this might be because this book told the truth and not full of made up stories like a lot the other books around.
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