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Bronson #1
Bronson
Charlie Bronson is Britain's most dangerous convict. During more than a quarter of a century inside, he has gained a fearsome reputation as the prison system's only serial hostage taker. He has spent 23 of the last 26 years in solitary confinement. He has been locked in dungeons, in iron boxes concreted into the middle of cells, and, famously, in a cage like Hannibal Lecter. Yet Bronson lives by a strict moral code and is respected and admired by many prison officers as well as prisoners. In this updated edition of his memoirs, Bronson reveals the happiness behind his controversial marriage to his wife Saira.
374 pages, Paperback
First published March 13, 2000
64 people are currently reading
743 people want to read
About the author
Charles Bronson
42 books84 followersEnglish criminal and former bare knuckle boxer.
Bronson is often referred to in the British press as the "most violent prisoner in Britain".Bronson wasa petty criminal before being sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1974.
While in prison, he began making a name for himself as a loose cannon, often fighting convicts and prison officers. He also embarked on one-man rooftop protests. He was released on 30 October 1988, but spent merely sixty-nine days as a free man before he was arrested again.
Upon his release, he began a bare-knuckle boxing career in the East End of London. His promoter was unhappy with his name and suggested he change it to Charles Bronson. He was returned to prison for planning another robbery and continued to be a difficult inmate, instigating numerous hostage situations.
While in jail in 2001, he married his second wife, Fatema Saira Rehman, a Bangladeshi-born divorcée who inspired him to convert to Islam and take the name of Charles Ali Ahmed.
This second marriage lasted four years before he divorced Rehman and renounced Islam.
Bronson is often referred to in the British press as the "most violent prisoner in Britain".Bronson wasa petty criminal before being sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1974.
While in prison, he began making a name for himself as a loose cannon, often fighting convicts and prison officers. He also embarked on one-man rooftop protests. He was released on 30 October 1988, but spent merely sixty-nine days as a free man before he was arrested again.
Upon his release, he began a bare-knuckle boxing career in the East End of London. His promoter was unhappy with his name and suggested he change it to Charles Bronson. He was returned to prison for planning another robbery and continued to be a difficult inmate, instigating numerous hostage situations.
While in jail in 2001, he married his second wife, Fatema Saira Rehman, a Bangladeshi-born divorcée who inspired him to convert to Islam and take the name of Charles Ali Ahmed.
This second marriage lasted four years before he divorced Rehman and renounced Islam.
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August 12, 2012
Charles Bronson was born. They had charged me under my fighting name, not under the name I was born with, Michael Gordon Peterson.
His knife was mightier than his pen. I can't tell you how sad it made me that he thought the officers who charged him under this adopted name did him a favor. He wears it like he wears his mustache, or his prison uniform. Lethal and two steps back in a duck and fight. Charles Bronson means convict, artist, poet, fighter, son, friend. A villain's mustache as biting at the bit and shackles on the feet. You can tell an inmate by the way they walk as if lining up. You can tell a solitary by their fetal position. He only ever really had himself in twenty-eight years of confinement. No one wanted him. Home is where your number is on the wall. They call this one Bronson's. No matter how much he loses he's still Charlie from the cell block. I can't tell you how sad it made me that Bronson imagines making the trip from his prison to his other prisons as a free man. He doesn't think of doing something else. This stone cold womb is giving birth to a still born.
At the mercy of his low threshold for pain sanity, one fist punching the system and the other beating his face beyond recognition. A mind that doesn't shatter with no hope for other reflections, no matter how far past the welcome dirt mat of hell it goes. The kind of recognition like seeing your own face after decades under a single 20 watt bulb hanging from a cement coffin that's the roof over your head. This isn't real. This isn't happening. You can tell a solitary by how they blink in the sun. All Hannibal Lector ever wanted was a view. He ends up in a cage comparable to that one, although Bronson hates the comparison (he makes it anyway). They had him in a body belt. He'll leave in a body bag. The will to "Fuck you" replaces the might to live. The umbilical chord strangles.
You had nothing else to do but imagine it in all the worst ways that going back and forth between hope and no hope can do to you. It is enough light to see the claw marks where you tried to dig out too late after being buried alive. You only dug yourself in deeper. The blood under your nails on your claw hands don't lie. Bronson buried himself. They threw away the key. He swallowed it first like a Houdini with a death wish (no allusion to the film starring Charles Bronson the actor intended. Lie! It's totally intended). Seven years for a robbery. He would have been out in three on good behavior. He couldn't take the seven. Charles Bronson would have 69 days of freedom. He would have 55 days of freedom, if you could make out the sun beyond the memory torture eclipse by then. I have nothing but disgust for the sentencing laws to keep people in prison for life sentences to exploit their cheap labor for the very private prison beneficiaries responsible for the sentencing legislation in the first place. My faith in humanity is disturbed by this. I can't get over it. How much fault can be laid at her Majesty's majestic halls of hell? It was pretty fucked up the way they moved him around constantly (no other prisoner has been transferred as much as Bronson). The Broadmoor asylum medication experiments were horrific. Bronson obliterated any chance he ever had of any kind of normal life himself, despite all they did to him (I'm guessing it cost his pride a lot to admit to reporting some brutality to the authorities in 1994. Nothing came of it). Prison didn't have to be as bad for him as it was. How could anyone survive like that and not go insane? I kinda can't blame him for twice going berserk and demanding a blow-up doll for company in exchange for his hostages. Bronson's life makes me unbearably sad. He fights a dog to the teeth when he is a "free man". He doesn't breathe fresh air. How did he not lose hope completely? Bronson could be taken as a joke with that mustache, the blow-up dolls, the dog fights, painting his body black, nudity, etc. He could make himself one. (Esteban tried to grow that 'stache once and it made him look like a third world porn star.) I feel sick with sadness that it ever had to be like that. No matter who it is (and I have to say I kinda like this guy a lot, despite how messed up he was. He just keeps trying despite it all that my heart broke for him). In all of this notoriety there is a very real human here. He gives up his impressive escape attempt of climbing a wall and living on a roof for days because it made his family sad. I respect "Bronson" as a memoir because it's like he was trying to be human in writing it, if that makes sense. How can you not feel for someone who had NOTHING else, and still doesn't take it as nothing?
Charles Bronson was also known as "The Birdman". Why he was given this name is never said in "Bronson". It could be because of the birds that feature in his art. Or it is the prisoner's cliche (myth?) of the little bird friend (one does crawl in through a hole and provide momentary salvation in their company). The Mariel take on this is it is like that bull shit ending of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Remember when the Chief busts the hell out of dodge? Run for our lives! Happy day. Only he's not, for their lives. The caged bird sings for whom and the free bird sings for them. It's something and is it ever enough? There is someone else in one of those clinical folding chairs for scheduled pills and orchestrated "fun". Progress slides back. Someone else flies away and someone else is going to be fucked. One documentary to expose psychotropic mind control drugs on their word against ours mental patients does fuck all to help someone somewhere else. If it isn't constant vigilance it is going to slide back. I see Charles Bronson as that heads you lose coin. The two-faced smile of insanity. The other side knows just how fucked up everything is. He is his own worst enemy and he knows it. Every chance he ever had he gives them the finger up his own ass. A prison with nice food, a good job? Fuck off. Behave and it'll go smoother. Fuck off. Hope and when you can't carry on any longer vigilance. He gets to where he has to have the isolation that is destroying him so that others will be safe from his explosions. I know that he was pretty much a dangerous psychopath as far as some of the unfortunate inmates or screws were concerned. I say "The Birdman" because he could be any of them. The fist, or the face. The finger, or the ass. How do you hold on to your sanity in prison? Keep your head down? The old lie that you only do two days- the day you get in and the day you get out? They were all Charles Bronson doing the time. You could put yourself in their place through him, when the red haze settles.
My faith in humanity has its own ping pong killer hand swing from proof that anyone can be more than this. Charles Bronson was more than a "Britain's most dangerous criminal". People do truly horrible things to themselves and others. The film version directed by Nicolas Winding Refn is one of my personal favorites. I hold up Tom Hardy's portrayal of Bronson to be visual proof that empathy with another person exists. There may not be another moment in cinema that haunts me more than the ending of Bronson in his Lector cage. He can't stop himself from ruining his own life and fighting any good chance he'll ever get. He loses his own mental battles again and again. The cage shot killed me. He has to stay in there. He "won" a ruined life. He would do it again if given the chance. Now that I've read the book I have to say that the film got a lot wrong. Bronson was not happy to be in prison. His mental struggle fights against institutionalization at his own cost. He cannot allow himself peace because that cha chung leaden sound leads to accepting that he'll never get out, that this is life. At the same time, he has given up ever getting out in the face of his own mental defeat. That his cell was a hotel room to hone his skills was bull shit. His mental insanity is his greatest pain. It is not his gift to make it to tomorrow to stay there forever if that one impossible day could have been won without reciprocal brutality. The moments of clarity are who he is and they make when he loses himself that much worse for him. It's tragic that anyone has to live like that. They got it right that it is what keeps him there. The "Fuck you" will is the loss of the will to live. Bronson wrote a memoir to have something to do. It's a mental pep talk in writing as much as it is an account of his life. I don't believe he ever had a stage in his mind. I wish he had one. I wish that he didn't. If he didn't he wouldn't be there. I don't know how he could survive with or without it. I'm lost.
One thing that struck me the most about "Bronson" the book as opposed to "Bronson" the film is that the man really loved his friends. He doesn't have friends in the film. I guess they had to show how isolated he was. The man loved his friends. Most of the book is about how much he loved the people he met. I was touched by the compassion that he had for the other inmates in the mental asylums (he does kind of call them "fucking loonies" like in the film. The disco really happened, too!). Maybe Tom Hardy saw a different Bronson in the flesh than I read in the book. If you show any kindness in prison you will be gutted for it. The people treated the worst are those were nicest to you. It was pretty amazing to me that Bronson admits to the things he does in this book. He had to have meant for people to read it. Sometimes he attempts to justify bad behavior to people he wronged. He's equally as up front about his own guilt. It was an interesting mix of prison fronting and a place to really be himself. I wonder how inmates took reading about him lying under a dirty blanket encrusted in his own blood after he tore up every precious memento of his family he had and all hope? His suicide attempts? The smell of inmates who did take their own in a nearby cell? Yeah, that Bronson felt pity for people who had nothing in a place like Broadmoor stood out to me. He wasn't always the man who would plot revenge on a fellow inmate who didn't return his broom to his cell. He had something to lose by being in that Lector cage. He still had so much to lose as he kept pissing it away again and again. I think it is more haunting that he did than if he had never had anyone, like in the film. (He had to have been writing for other inmates. There was a lot of advice about everything from the pros and cons of drinking prison hooch. Say no to drugs! Also, all the business about which inmates or guards were "good sorts" and the basis for determining this seemed taken for granted in the world of prison life.)
The film was also wrong that he didn't give a shit about his own art. He did. Despite my complaints, it is a wonderful depiction of being helpless to your self. I did read "Bronson" expecting to get that. But I have to admit that I read "Bronson" because I was thinking about how the hell you can take a philosophy and have to apply it or die. Okay, I read "Bronson" because I knew he had to live in solitary isolation for almost as long as I've been alive. How do you live with nothing else but what is in your own head? You can tell yourself that it is do or die. If you feel so alone, so consumed in self hatred, and you have to keep on anyway? How the hell can thought be enough to live on? Bronson didn't succeed a lot of the time. He must have some of the time. I have a feeling that he would do it all again if he could. That it would be worth it to him to have had a life. I don't think I could say the same to live in hell as he did. It's just so painful that he had to live completely alone to feel safe from himself. I don't know. Can it be true that it would be worth it? The book ends that he was buried alive like that. He's still there. Charles Bronson has been in prison longer than I have been alive. I just can't get that feeling about a bird being free when someone else isn't. I guess the best I can get is a little bit that he has his art and his exercise. I guess it is what five seasons of The Wire took to say that all you can do is manage what little bit of happiness you can get and don't try to die fighting the system (an inmate gives Bronson the sage advice to not try to fight the system unless you are willing to die doing so).
Bronson wrote an infamous fitness book called "Solitary Fitness". I am not kidding that there are excercises for the penis in there. Did he need them? Despite his protestations to "just not in front of me", it was pretty clear that Bronson has problems about homosexuals. Mouths are not for kisses for him. What are the penis exercises about? Something to pass the time? I should probably have mentioned that he is pretty darn funny. Even when he is depressing as hell about this drunk chick, Kelly-Anne, that uses him (and sets him up BOTH times he actually gets out of prison!) it is so matter of fact that I had to laugh. Why was this chick writing this guy locked up in prison who couldn't possibly help her? He seems to have one eye open on 1. That was a fucked up situation and 2. Something to do to pass the time. Life, huh? You can tell a solitary by how open and shut his eyes are around potential contacts. Bronson loses control of his voice from years of shouting to fellow prisoners. He knows them by their nightly screams. 3. Are you better off without them?
I felt pretty bad reading about Kelly-Anne writing to him when I was reading his memoir for help on how to bear living in my own mental hell circles (at the same time, I'm glad he had someone when he did, as awful as she turned out to be). Well, I believe that all people are connected and worthy of fellow human feeling. He had his to bear same as anyone else. If anyone would know about keeping your head above yourself it would be a guy living in imposed isolation for a lifetime. Just keep trying, and hope it isn't forever?
Dear Charles Bronson,
(It made me so sad when he was happy his first day in Broadmoor because two of his prison buddies were also there. Damn! This book made me so sad I couldn't stand it!)
(It took me about half of the book to realize that screws meant guards. My vocabulary sucks.)
P.s. I noticed that he stopped keeping track of time and pop culture after the '80s. He doesn't note this loss of the outside world himself. I noticed that he would use top hits of the given year as a way to keep in touch with himself and then. I didn't know where else to mention that in the review. It goes to show you about breaking points that he notes again and again that different times were when he "gave up". Another time it was THIS time that he knew he gave up on ever getting out. Hope lives? Or it is all futile? I just don't know... He read a lot, that's obvious. He keeps his body in shape. Maybe that's the only important thing. If you're going to be stuck in your own head, to have somewhere to let something else in. It really sucked when they wouldn't let him have the tools to make his art. I know there's a lot to get upset over than just that... That was really hard to read, though!
As with anyone who has lived the solitary life for so many years, I long at times to retreat to it. It's a place of safety. Yes, the Wakefield Cage is gruesome, cold and empty, but at times it has been a sanctuary to me. A place of peace where I can search myself and go inside myself- Where I can ask the question, 'Why am I like I am?' It is institutionalization at its most extreme. That extreme, to me, has become normality.
His knife was mightier than his pen. I can't tell you how sad it made me that he thought the officers who charged him under this adopted name did him a favor. He wears it like he wears his mustache, or his prison uniform. Lethal and two steps back in a duck and fight. Charles Bronson means convict, artist, poet, fighter, son, friend. A villain's mustache as biting at the bit and shackles on the feet. You can tell an inmate by the way they walk as if lining up. You can tell a solitary by their fetal position. He only ever really had himself in twenty-eight years of confinement. No one wanted him. Home is where your number is on the wall. They call this one Bronson's. No matter how much he loses he's still Charlie from the cell block. I can't tell you how sad it made me that Bronson imagines making the trip from his prison to his other prisons as a free man. He doesn't think of doing something else. This stone cold womb is giving birth to a still born.
At the mercy of his low threshold for pain sanity, one fist punching the system and the other beating his face beyond recognition. A mind that doesn't shatter with no hope for other reflections, no matter how far past the welcome dirt mat of hell it goes. The kind of recognition like seeing your own face after decades under a single 20 watt bulb hanging from a cement coffin that's the roof over your head. This isn't real. This isn't happening. You can tell a solitary by how they blink in the sun. All Hannibal Lector ever wanted was a view. He ends up in a cage comparable to that one, although Bronson hates the comparison (he makes it anyway). They had him in a body belt. He'll leave in a body bag. The will to "Fuck you" replaces the might to live. The umbilical chord strangles.
You had nothing else to do but imagine it in all the worst ways that going back and forth between hope and no hope can do to you. It is enough light to see the claw marks where you tried to dig out too late after being buried alive. You only dug yourself in deeper. The blood under your nails on your claw hands don't lie. Bronson buried himself. They threw away the key. He swallowed it first like a Houdini with a death wish (no allusion to the film starring Charles Bronson the actor intended. Lie! It's totally intended). Seven years for a robbery. He would have been out in three on good behavior. He couldn't take the seven. Charles Bronson would have 69 days of freedom. He would have 55 days of freedom, if you could make out the sun beyond the memory torture eclipse by then. I have nothing but disgust for the sentencing laws to keep people in prison for life sentences to exploit their cheap labor for the very private prison beneficiaries responsible for the sentencing legislation in the first place. My faith in humanity is disturbed by this. I can't get over it. How much fault can be laid at her Majesty's majestic halls of hell? It was pretty fucked up the way they moved him around constantly (no other prisoner has been transferred as much as Bronson). The Broadmoor asylum medication experiments were horrific. Bronson obliterated any chance he ever had of any kind of normal life himself, despite all they did to him (I'm guessing it cost his pride a lot to admit to reporting some brutality to the authorities in 1994. Nothing came of it). Prison didn't have to be as bad for him as it was. How could anyone survive like that and not go insane? I kinda can't blame him for twice going berserk and demanding a blow-up doll for company in exchange for his hostages. Bronson's life makes me unbearably sad. He fights a dog to the teeth when he is a "free man". He doesn't breathe fresh air. How did he not lose hope completely? Bronson could be taken as a joke with that mustache, the blow-up dolls, the dog fights, painting his body black, nudity, etc. He could make himself one. (Esteban tried to grow that 'stache once and it made him look like a third world porn star.) I feel sick with sadness that it ever had to be like that. No matter who it is (and I have to say I kinda like this guy a lot, despite how messed up he was. He just keeps trying despite it all that my heart broke for him). In all of this notoriety there is a very real human here. He gives up his impressive escape attempt of climbing a wall and living on a roof for days because it made his family sad. I respect "Bronson" as a memoir because it's like he was trying to be human in writing it, if that makes sense. How can you not feel for someone who had NOTHING else, and still doesn't take it as nothing?
Charles Bronson was also known as "The Birdman". Why he was given this name is never said in "Bronson". It could be because of the birds that feature in his art. Or it is the prisoner's cliche (myth?) of the little bird friend (one does crawl in through a hole and provide momentary salvation in their company). The Mariel take on this is it is like that bull shit ending of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Remember when the Chief busts the hell out of dodge? Run for our lives! Happy day. Only he's not, for their lives. The caged bird sings for whom and the free bird sings for them. It's something and is it ever enough? There is someone else in one of those clinical folding chairs for scheduled pills and orchestrated "fun". Progress slides back. Someone else flies away and someone else is going to be fucked. One documentary to expose psychotropic mind control drugs on their word against ours mental patients does fuck all to help someone somewhere else. If it isn't constant vigilance it is going to slide back. I see Charles Bronson as that heads you lose coin. The two-faced smile of insanity. The other side knows just how fucked up everything is. He is his own worst enemy and he knows it. Every chance he ever had he gives them the finger up his own ass. A prison with nice food, a good job? Fuck off. Behave and it'll go smoother. Fuck off. Hope and when you can't carry on any longer vigilance. He gets to where he has to have the isolation that is destroying him so that others will be safe from his explosions. I know that he was pretty much a dangerous psychopath as far as some of the unfortunate inmates or screws were concerned. I say "The Birdman" because he could be any of them. The fist, or the face. The finger, or the ass. How do you hold on to your sanity in prison? Keep your head down? The old lie that you only do two days- the day you get in and the day you get out? They were all Charles Bronson doing the time. You could put yourself in their place through him, when the red haze settles.
My faith in humanity has its own ping pong killer hand swing from proof that anyone can be more than this. Charles Bronson was more than a "Britain's most dangerous criminal". People do truly horrible things to themselves and others. The film version directed by Nicolas Winding Refn is one of my personal favorites. I hold up Tom Hardy's portrayal of Bronson to be visual proof that empathy with another person exists. There may not be another moment in cinema that haunts me more than the ending of Bronson in his Lector cage. He can't stop himself from ruining his own life and fighting any good chance he'll ever get. He loses his own mental battles again and again. The cage shot killed me. He has to stay in there. He "won" a ruined life. He would do it again if given the chance. Now that I've read the book I have to say that the film got a lot wrong. Bronson was not happy to be in prison. His mental struggle fights against institutionalization at his own cost. He cannot allow himself peace because that cha chung leaden sound leads to accepting that he'll never get out, that this is life. At the same time, he has given up ever getting out in the face of his own mental defeat. That his cell was a hotel room to hone his skills was bull shit. His mental insanity is his greatest pain. It is not his gift to make it to tomorrow to stay there forever if that one impossible day could have been won without reciprocal brutality. The moments of clarity are who he is and they make when he loses himself that much worse for him. It's tragic that anyone has to live like that. They got it right that it is what keeps him there. The "Fuck you" will is the loss of the will to live. Bronson wrote a memoir to have something to do. It's a mental pep talk in writing as much as it is an account of his life. I don't believe he ever had a stage in his mind. I wish he had one. I wish that he didn't. If he didn't he wouldn't be there. I don't know how he could survive with or without it. I'm lost.
One thing that struck me the most about "Bronson" the book as opposed to "Bronson" the film is that the man really loved his friends. He doesn't have friends in the film. I guess they had to show how isolated he was. The man loved his friends. Most of the book is about how much he loved the people he met. I was touched by the compassion that he had for the other inmates in the mental asylums (he does kind of call them "fucking loonies" like in the film. The disco really happened, too!). Maybe Tom Hardy saw a different Bronson in the flesh than I read in the book. If you show any kindness in prison you will be gutted for it. The people treated the worst are those were nicest to you. It was pretty amazing to me that Bronson admits to the things he does in this book. He had to have meant for people to read it. Sometimes he attempts to justify bad behavior to people he wronged. He's equally as up front about his own guilt. It was an interesting mix of prison fronting and a place to really be himself. I wonder how inmates took reading about him lying under a dirty blanket encrusted in his own blood after he tore up every precious memento of his family he had and all hope? His suicide attempts? The smell of inmates who did take their own in a nearby cell? Yeah, that Bronson felt pity for people who had nothing in a place like Broadmoor stood out to me. He wasn't always the man who would plot revenge on a fellow inmate who didn't return his broom to his cell. He had something to lose by being in that Lector cage. He still had so much to lose as he kept pissing it away again and again. I think it is more haunting that he did than if he had never had anyone, like in the film. (He had to have been writing for other inmates. There was a lot of advice about everything from the pros and cons of drinking prison hooch. Say no to drugs! Also, all the business about which inmates or guards were "good sorts" and the basis for determining this seemed taken for granted in the world of prison life.)
The film was also wrong that he didn't give a shit about his own art. He did. Despite my complaints, it is a wonderful depiction of being helpless to your self. I did read "Bronson" expecting to get that. But I have to admit that I read "Bronson" because I was thinking about how the hell you can take a philosophy and have to apply it or die. Okay, I read "Bronson" because I knew he had to live in solitary isolation for almost as long as I've been alive. How do you live with nothing else but what is in your own head? You can tell yourself that it is do or die. If you feel so alone, so consumed in self hatred, and you have to keep on anyway? How the hell can thought be enough to live on? Bronson didn't succeed a lot of the time. He must have some of the time. I have a feeling that he would do it all again if he could. That it would be worth it to him to have had a life. I don't think I could say the same to live in hell as he did. It's just so painful that he had to live completely alone to feel safe from himself. I don't know. Can it be true that it would be worth it? The book ends that he was buried alive like that. He's still there. Charles Bronson has been in prison longer than I have been alive. I just can't get that feeling about a bird being free when someone else isn't. I guess the best I can get is a little bit that he has his art and his exercise. I guess it is what five seasons of The Wire took to say that all you can do is manage what little bit of happiness you can get and don't try to die fighting the system (an inmate gives Bronson the sage advice to not try to fight the system unless you are willing to die doing so).
Bronson wrote an infamous fitness book called "Solitary Fitness". I am not kidding that there are excercises for the penis in there. Did he need them? Despite his protestations to "just not in front of me", it was pretty clear that Bronson has problems about homosexuals. Mouths are not for kisses for him. What are the penis exercises about? Something to pass the time? I should probably have mentioned that he is pretty darn funny. Even when he is depressing as hell about this drunk chick, Kelly-Anne, that uses him (and sets him up BOTH times he actually gets out of prison!) it is so matter of fact that I had to laugh. Why was this chick writing this guy locked up in prison who couldn't possibly help her? He seems to have one eye open on 1. That was a fucked up situation and 2. Something to do to pass the time. Life, huh? You can tell a solitary by how open and shut his eyes are around potential contacts. Bronson loses control of his voice from years of shouting to fellow prisoners. He knows them by their nightly screams. 3. Are you better off without them?
I felt pretty bad reading about Kelly-Anne writing to him when I was reading his memoir for help on how to bear living in my own mental hell circles (at the same time, I'm glad he had someone when he did, as awful as she turned out to be). Well, I believe that all people are connected and worthy of fellow human feeling. He had his to bear same as anyone else. If anyone would know about keeping your head above yourself it would be a guy living in imposed isolation for a lifetime. Just keep trying, and hope it isn't forever?
Dear Charles Bronson,
(It made me so sad when he was happy his first day in Broadmoor because two of his prison buddies were also there. Damn! This book made me so sad I couldn't stand it!)
(It took me about half of the book to realize that screws meant guards. My vocabulary sucks.)
P.s. I noticed that he stopped keeping track of time and pop culture after the '80s. He doesn't note this loss of the outside world himself. I noticed that he would use top hits of the given year as a way to keep in touch with himself and then. I didn't know where else to mention that in the review. It goes to show you about breaking points that he notes again and again that different times were when he "gave up". Another time it was THIS time that he knew he gave up on ever getting out. Hope lives? Or it is all futile? I just don't know... He read a lot, that's obvious. He keeps his body in shape. Maybe that's the only important thing. If you're going to be stuck in your own head, to have somewhere to let something else in. It really sucked when they wouldn't let him have the tools to make his art. I know there's a lot to get upset over than just that... That was really hard to read, though!
As with anyone who has lived the solitary life for so many years, I long at times to retreat to it. It's a place of safety. Yes, the Wakefield Cage is gruesome, cold and empty, but at times it has been a sanctuary to me. A place of peace where I can search myself and go inside myself- Where I can ask the question, 'Why am I like I am?' It is institutionalization at its most extreme. That extreme, to me, has become normality.
December 13, 2024
Както знаете, Чарлз Бронсън го имат за най-агресивния затворник във Великобритания, прекарал почти целия си живот в затвора, има филм за него между другото, доста готин. Това е автобиографията му, която, честно казано е доста тъжна, въпреки (всъщност май именно заради) неговата неувяхваща надежда и жизнерадостност, въпреки тежкия му живот.
Тъжна е, защото този несъмнено невероятно физически надарен човек, с огромна воля и упоритост, цял живот се "бори срещу системата" без да осъзнае, че неговият най-голям враг е самият той - с неговата неукротима агресивност, психическа нестабилност и склонност да пребива останалите затворници, надзиратели и посетители неочаквано и без провокация.
Иначе книгата е написана от него и пълна с негови рисунки - и писането и рисуването му са на нивото на третокласник, което е и нивото на интелектуалното и емоционално развитие на автора. Както казах, тъжно.
Тъжна е, защото този несъмнено невероятно физически надарен човек, с огромна воля и упоритост, цял живот се "бори срещу системата" без да осъзнае, че неговият най-голям враг е самият той - с неговата неукротима агресивност, психическа нестабилност и склонност да пребива останалите затворници, надзиратели и посетители неочаквано и без провокация.
Иначе книгата е написана от него и пълна с негови рисунки - и писането и рисуването му са на нивото на третокласник, което е и нивото на интелектуалното и емоционално развитие на автора. Както казах, тъжно.
May 3, 2018
This autobiography is about Bronson’s experiences in jail, of which he has spent more of his life, not due to the original crime, but because his violent tendencies in prison, has caused his terms to keep getting extended. The two times he was set free, he fucked up quickly, landing him in jail again.
The story itself is boring, since Bronson’s life experience is, unfortunately, a waste. He is spending time in prison, some co-prisoner or guard pisses him off, and he gets in a fight with them, and he gets punished. That’s all there is. And while there seems to be some struggles within Bronson to improve himself, life isn’t a movie, he just constantly fails. He repeats the same mistakes constantly.
However, what I find interesting about his character is that it tells us a lot about how a lot of people are. Bronson’s faults are magnified, but I look around at people who, like Bronson, seem to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, and the only person they seem to hurt is themselves. When Bronson seems to be improving, but he gets into another useless fight due to some slight to his pride, you want to grab him and beg him to just chill out, because he is only hurting himself. But Bronson is just an exaggerated version of the millions of people who do the same thing.
Sometimes the best way to win in life, is to lose some battles. Bronson kept losing, because he kept insisting on pyrrhic victories. This is the real lesson of his memoirs.
The story itself is boring, since Bronson’s life experience is, unfortunately, a waste. He is spending time in prison, some co-prisoner or guard pisses him off, and he gets in a fight with them, and he gets punished. That’s all there is. And while there seems to be some struggles within Bronson to improve himself, life isn’t a movie, he just constantly fails. He repeats the same mistakes constantly.
However, what I find interesting about his character is that it tells us a lot about how a lot of people are. Bronson’s faults are magnified, but I look around at people who, like Bronson, seem to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, and the only person they seem to hurt is themselves. When Bronson seems to be improving, but he gets into another useless fight due to some slight to his pride, you want to grab him and beg him to just chill out, because he is only hurting himself. But Bronson is just an exaggerated version of the millions of people who do the same thing.
Sometimes the best way to win in life, is to lose some battles. Bronson kept losing, because he kept insisting on pyrrhic victories. This is the real lesson of his memoirs.
March 26, 2013
So much better than the film! The book is a roller coaster of emotions happy sad angry you name it its there! Really loved this book the man is infamous britains most notorious inmate! I couldn't help but feel sorry for him in the end whether he wants this or not I don't know! But what I like about Bronson is he doesn't blame society or any one else for what he has done he takes responsibility for it all! RESPECT LEGEND
March 24, 2013
Hard man, hard life. Unfortunately it is all his own fault. Leaves you unsure of your feelings for 'Charlie'. Pity or revulsion...
March 22, 2020
Interesting read .....
May 3, 2024
I’d like to give it 3.5 stars
September 24, 2017
Autobiography of one of the most dangerous man in British prison system.A movie was made about him.Once he was certified insane and was admitted to mental asylums within the prison system.He was admitted to almost every jail in Britain. this book tells his story of 3 decades of survival.of these, 26 in solitary confinement.I felt really sad for the guy.They go in as criminals and returns as insane ,or in bodybags.He never killed anyone in his life.his loneliness shown him his creative sides and he started to create art,cartoons and poetry and won many prison awards for the same.A sad and yet funny story.Dont expect any literary magic and be ready for strong languages
December 21, 2009
The autobiography of Charles Bronson, is both interesting and frustrating. On the one hand, I found myself feeling that he was the victim in several circumstances, just because of his legendary name. On the other hand, I became frustrated that he couldn't seem to learn from his mistakes. I plan on seeing the film now that I've finished the book.
February 8, 2012
excellent book a real interesting read from a very troubled person
June 29, 2012
A fascinating story, told in a rather dull way.
September 24, 2019
Bronsan had a big moustache and no friends it was a sad but good book
August 18, 2024
An incredibly fascinating piece of literature but ultimately a flawed one. Charles Bronson is the ultimate unreliable narrator, placing the reader in a state of perpetual questioning of the truthfulness of the text. Interestingly, the book feels as if it functions both as a general description of Bronson's spiral(s) into madness and - to varying degrees of subtlety - a self-justification of his inability to escape institutionalisation. Charles doesn't lay the self-pity on thick, but he does speak as if his actions were reasoned, however outrageous and violent they may have been. He acts surprised - which may well be honest from his perspective - when he's given a larger security detail and stricter conditions than "worse" criminals, despite having spent the entire length of the book detailing the extensive array of crimes he'd committed both in and out of prison. It's this slight but ever-present detachment from reality that makes "Bronson" such a fascinating, albeit somewhat repetitive, piece of non*-fiction.
August 13, 2018
I had always wanted to know why this guy supposedly keeps messing up and why the newspapers say hes the most notorious prisoner.
By the end of this book I can say I personally like the man, hes honest and tells the story exactly how it is and doesn't expect people to be sorry for him and takes responsibility for his fights and actions while in prison.
I don't think its fair hes been kept in this long as theres lots of disgusting murderers, paedophiles and rapists that are walking free.
Let him have a chance back out in the open I say and give the man some help to finally lead a normal life.
A brilliant account of a mans life told with honesty and it shows the more personal and loving side of him deep down, this is one of the best biographies I have ever read.
If he ever gets to read this review I would like to thank him for taking the time to tell this story and show us who you really are.
By the end of this book I can say I personally like the man, hes honest and tells the story exactly how it is and doesn't expect people to be sorry for him and takes responsibility for his fights and actions while in prison.
I don't think its fair hes been kept in this long as theres lots of disgusting murderers, paedophiles and rapists that are walking free.
Let him have a chance back out in the open I say and give the man some help to finally lead a normal life.
A brilliant account of a mans life told with honesty and it shows the more personal and loving side of him deep down, this is one of the best biographies I have ever read.
If he ever gets to read this review I would like to thank him for taking the time to tell this story and show us who you really are.
August 30, 2018
Heart breaking insight to such a troubled mash
A friend recommended this book to me and I'm so glad she did. The story of how Bronson became the person he is is not just interesting but heart breaking as well.
A true life story of systematic abuse and institutionalisation and the devastating effects this has, as well as a failure to recognise and support those within the penal system with mental health problems.
As someone interested in what makes people tick I loved this book and urge anyone to read it.
A friend recommended this book to me and I'm so glad she did. The story of how Bronson became the person he is is not just interesting but heart breaking as well.
A true life story of systematic abuse and institutionalisation and the devastating effects this has, as well as a failure to recognise and support those within the penal system with mental health problems.
As someone interested in what makes people tick I loved this book and urge anyone to read it.
February 23, 2019
Having had a pre-pre-conceived opinion of him before reading this i can't decide if he is a product of the system or he is genuinely the most violent man in britain. Yes he was violent to start with hence the reason he's locked up. But his treatment over the years,being kept in isolation,constantly being moved from prison to prison can't have helped his mental state. But he does say stay on his right side he'll be your best mate, but get on his wrong side he is the baddest,meanest m**********r you can meet. Certainly worth a read
October 8, 2025
Bronson offers glorified violence with superficial explanations for his actions, “someone made me angry” or “I just went mad”. You’re constantly invited to feel sorry for a boastful proud man who as an afterthought tries to offer a feeble attempt at taking accountability for his actions. The ending suggests you should blame the prison system for creating him despite being released twice to society and back to a loving family for him to commit crime and violence because… you guessed it “someone made him angry”. A reasonable read but don’t hope for any insightful breakthroughs.
June 18, 2017
Трудно се постяват оценки на автобиографични книги. Чарлз Бронсън е пример за саморазрушително поведение, без да е извършил сериозно престъпление по-голямата част от живота си я прекарва затворен. Агресията, която той не може да контролира проваля живота му.
Книгата е написана детински, но се чете бързо, сравнително интересна, без излишна драма, въпреки кошмарните истории, които разказва. Включени са снимки на Бронсън, както и негови рисунки.
Книгата е написана детински, но се чете бързо, сравнително интересна, без излишна драма, въпреки кошмарните истории, които разказва. Включени са снимки на Бронсън, както и негови рисунки.
January 30, 2019
What an amazing insight into how fucked up the prisons are , if only people really listened to bronson then maybe he would be stable enough to be integrated with other people . He’s been stitched up so many times just because of his name and it isn’t right at all . The way he has been treated is worse than that of an animal . Yes he has done some bad things but his head is screwed from everything the home office have put him through
It was such a fabulous read
It was such a fabulous read
June 4, 2023
Автобиография, която ни превежда през ада – ада на институциите и личния ад на съществуването. Едва мъждукащата надежда, отчаяната нужда да се хванеш за нещо, което да те спаси – физическите упражнения, рисуването, каквото и да е, стига да ти дава някакъв смисъл в свят, където „сънищата са се превърнали в кошмари, фантазиите – в действителност, любовта – в празнота“.
Пълната рецензия: https://flame16.blogspot.com/2023/06/...
Пълната рецензия: https://flame16.blogspot.com/2023/06/...
January 9, 2025
A boring, depressing and repetitive read. The exploits of a working class petty criminal with an unhealthy psychological attachment to HMP. A never ending pattern of breaking the law, prison transfers and push ups. This man seems to idolise other inmates and fetishize incarceration. Astonished how this man is often times respected and reviered in the British zeitgeist. A very uninteresting biography.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2023
Sentenced 7 years for armed robbery, this initial sentence turned into 50 years of mostly solitary confinement for Charlie. It's an interesting look into a man whose mind is suspended in time - talking and thinking like a relic from the 70s. I think the justice system have proved their point. Rejecting his most recent appeal for release makes them the real criminals in the equation.
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January 27, 2025This kind of book is incredibly difficult to give a star rating because it's a man's life and it's a harrowing account. Realistically you can't judge something like this based on how well it's written so I'll leave the rating blank. But this is absolutely worth a read and really throws some light onto a very complicated person.
November 22, 2017
Here lies a man with not just strength of character but integrity to fight for what he stands for. His sacrifice will not and has not gone unnoticed by the good people adversely affected by the shallow and dim witted uk penal and mental health system.
March 27, 2018
Repetitive in parts but interesting to read what happens behind closed doors.
October 15, 2018
A heartbreaking read. Yes Charles Bronson is far from being an angel but he has been hard done by. I must read book 2. Stay Strong x
August 12, 2019
Good book, gives an insight into life in jail!!
spent his whole life in solitary poor bloke no wonder he crazy FREE BRONSON
spent his whole life in solitary poor bloke no wonder he crazy FREE BRONSON
October 20, 2019
An interesting read about the life of Charles Bronson
December 5, 2019
An interesting read. Quite sad in parts, a self destructive character who has wasted his life in prison.
March 10, 2020
Great read, a mad man altogether
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