Tuesday 24 September 2019

Say it with a brooch: what message was Lady Hale's spider sending?



Say it with a brooch: what message was Lady Hale's spider sending?

The judge is the latest powerful woman to use a brooch to make a coded statement

All the day’s political developments – live
Lauren Cochrane and Martin Belam
Tue 24 Sep 2019 14.37 BSTFirst published on Tue 24 Sep 2019 13.56 BST

Lady Hale’s image was beamed across the world with all the signifiers of the supreme court – papers, judge’s bench, austere clothing. It was the court’s stunning verdict that would dominate the headlines, of course, but the judge’s spider brooch – pinned to her black dress – had the optics that made it a story of its own.

Wearing a spider to deliver news that trapped the prime minister felt pointed – a message backed on a safety pin. Twitter certainly read it that way. “What could Brenda Hale be telling us with her AMAZING giant spider brooch?” wrote @Anna_Girling. By Tuesday afternoon, there was a call for the brooch to have its own Twitter account.

Anna Girling
@Anna_Girling
'Weaving spiders come not here', 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive', etc.... What could Brenda Hale be telling us with her AMAZING giant spider brooch...?

The brooch soon made its way, via social media attention, on to a T-shirt sold by Balcony Shirts. Based, ironically, in Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge constituency, the company has donated 30% of proceeds to the homelessness charity Shelter. It has raised more than £5,000 in the couple of hours after Hale delivered the court’s verdict.




A spokesperson for the company said: “We often print topical t-shirts, and as everyone on Twitter was talking about the brooch we thought it was a great angle for a new design. We can’t believe it’s taken off quite the way it has. We picked Shelter as homelessness appears to be a growing problem in Uxbridge, and it’s nice to do our part.”

Brooches are enjoying something of a moment in fashion this autumn – seen on the catwalk at Versace and Erdem – but Hale is a brooch trailblazer. She has a particular fondness for creepy crawlies – frogs, beetles and the like. On her profile on the supreme court website, she wears a brooch of a caterpillar – like the spider, it’s an animal that hardly has the cute factor on its side.






With the spider, Hale joins a list of high-profile women who have used the seemingly unassuming brooch to send a message – at least, some observers think so.

The Queen’s brooches for Donald Trump’s visit in 2018 – one of which was given to her by Barack Obama – were interpreted as statements of her displeasure with the current US president.

Madeleine Albright, as secretary of state under Bill Clinton, was open about her use of brooches – or “pins” to Americans. After being called an “unparalleled serpent” by Iraqi state media, she wore a snake brooch to her next meeting with the country’s officials and her brooch-as-statement career began.

Albright published a book called Read My Pins in 2009 and has continued to allow her pins to say it all.

The smashed glass ceiling design, worn to watch Hillary Clinton make her nominee speech in 2016, broke the internet. Hale’s spider could do the same. It certainly suggests Hale doesn’t squirm when faced with any kind of insect.



Sunday 22 September 2019

Downton Abbey review – VIDEO:Official Trailer (Universal Pictures) HD




Downton Abbey review – mostly harmless TV spin-off
3 / 5 stars3 out of 5 stars.   
Familiar comforts abound in a big screen outing for the Crawleys and staff

Simran Hans
@heavier_things
Sun 15 Sep 2019 05.30 BST

There is something faintly Hogwartian about the opening scene of Downton Abbey, which follows a hand-stamped letter’s journey via steam train from Buckingham Palace to ITV’s most beloved Yorkshire manor. Movie spin-offs of TV shows are almost never a good idea and this is no exception, the film’s narrative rhythm structured in bite-size episodic beats.

The budget seems bigger, the costumes flashier and the swooping overhead shots of the Crawley mansion appropriately cinematic, but, truth be told, there’s little to suggest that this has been designed for the big screen rather than as an extended television special.

The hugely popular series ran for six seasons from 2010 to 2015, offering an exportable social history of Britain between 1912 and 1926. Those who followed will likely enjoy being reunited with Maggie Smith’s withering asides, impish scullery maid Daisy Mason’s (Sophie McShera) anodyne flirtations with a sexy plumber (James Cartwright), and a juicy bone thrown in the direction of Robert James-Collier’s gay footman Thomas Barrow. Those who didn’t will find it easy enough to keep up with the plot, which centres on a visit from George V (Simon Jones) and Queen Mary (Geraldine James).

Still, it’s lighthearted stuff and mostly benign too, save its unashamedly effusive stance on the monarchy.


Downton Abbey, like plantation houses, delivers fantasy over brute reality
Michael Henry Adams
The American south may seem a long way from the estates of England, but in both places a veil of caprice covers harsh truths

Sat 21 Sep 2019 06.00 BSTLast modified on Sat 21 Sep 2019 18.31 BST

The son of a Scottish immigrant who worked as a servant, Donald Trump could hardly wait for his banquet at Buckingham Palace. A seat next to Elizabeth II conferred a sense of accomplishment little else could.

To many, such behavior from an American president appeared downright unseemly. But how could we scoff? How else have so many of us been eagerly awaiting the return of Downton Abbey?

TV and film can be transporting, giving us glimpses of lives we can only imagine imperfectly. Decades before Julian Fellowes’ creation came forth to conquer America, PBS offered a steady diet of British clotted cream. Royals, aristocrats, castles, servants, sex. Such is the stuff of which Downton daydreams are made.

We make our own fantasies too. As a boy, watching Gone With the Wind, I saw plantation houses for which I thought I could sell my soul. It seemed such an alluring way of life.

No wonder people complain of being lectured about slavery when they visit Savannah or Charleston. They, like me, have imagined themselves in the master’s place. No work to be done, fanned on white-pillared porches, sipping cooling drinks, pondering pleasures to come. Is it surprising so many, confronted by the nightmare behind the reverie, recoil in unacknowledged shame?

I came to this crossroads early, no longer able to overlook the anguish of my ancestors. I saw exquisite architecture and ideas of gracious hospitality but knew both to be built on the worst criminality.

 How alike our ruling classes are. How nefarious the sources of their vast wealth, on which beautiful homes were built

Fortunately, thanks to green England, I was able to transfer my affections. The Forsyte Saga, Upstairs Downstairs, Brideshead Revisited, The Admirable Crichton. The Shooting Party, The Remains of the Day, Gosford Park. They became my refuge and taught me much. Entranced by an elegant aesthetic, reading countless books, even attending the Attingham Summer School to study famous country houses, I sought an elusive loveliness, untroubled by oppression.

At the very lightest level, all this means I know that Downton – the whole phenomenon, the TV series, the film, the traveling exhibition, the merchandising – is a ludicrous and ahistorical fancy.

I know, for example, that contrary to what we see on Fellowes’ screen, non-royal butlers did not wear white waistcoats and that waiters did not wear dinner jackets at all. I know ladies were never gloved while drinking or eating, candles were never used on a luncheon table and candle shades, now found only in royal residences, were in fact universal. For enthusiasts like me, it’s such esoterica which makes Downton so enjoyable.

But as in my love affair with the plantations of the American south, there was a wriggling worm in the bud.

How alike our ruling classes are. How nefarious the sources of their vast wealth, on which such beautiful homes were built.

In the UK, to take just one example, a house as sublime as Harewood, near Leeds, altered by Robert Adam, was funded by the infamous triangular trade. Even English currency came to be defined by slavery. With abolition by Britain in 1833 came compensation to 46,000 slave owners for 800,000 liberated Africans, until the banks were rescued in 2009 the largest government bailout in history.

There were other sources of income. Indian opium, imposed on China. Farms in Ireland. The wealth behind many of the estates of England was no less tainted than that which built plantations in Virginia, Alabama and Georgia.

Fellowes was careful to give his great house a more benign foundation. The Earl of Grantham, we are told, derives his affluence straight from his Yorkshire estates.

Hit hard by agricultural depressions, he takes an option not available to his tenants: he marries the daughter of an American millionaire. That said millionaire is an untitled Jew, a dry goods merchant from Cincinnati, is among storylines meant to show us what a good egg the earl really is, an unlikely egalitarian in tweeds. But he’s an imprudent one too: by investing his wife’s millions in a Canadian railway that goes bankrupt, Grantham places all his loved ones in peril.

Worse occurred in real life, of course. Much worse. Take the brutal, polluting mills and mines, like so many plantation fields, that often lay just outside the gates.

Of course, Downton isn’t real. So, to stay in the realm of art, consider Shipley, the neo-Palladian masterpiece DH Lawrence invented for Lady Chatterley’s Lover. There, Squire Leslie Winter talks of the miners who work his pits with all the condescension a planter might have for his slaves.

Chatting with the Prince of Wales, Winter quips: “The miners are perhaps not so ornamental as deer, but they are far more profitable.”

 We are the heirs to those who did all the work, those who built the Downtons and the plantations
HRH replies: “If there were coal under Sandringham, I would open a mine on the lawns and think it first-rate landscape gardening. Oh, I am quite willing to exchange roe-deer for colliers, at the price.”

In the real world, many fine homes have been lost. Their deaths, like their lives, are all about the money.

In Lawrence’s book, the squire dies and his heirs tear down his hall to build semi-detached “villas” for workers. Lady Chatterley is shocked to learn such people are as capable of love as she is. One suspects Fellowes, the author of a novel called Snobs, no less, might feel a similar shock if told us ordinary people who love Downton, his facile but beautiful and seductive creation, are capable of sincere feeling too.

We are. And while we are equipped to daydream of such luxury for ourselves, or to pick nits with Fellowes’ staging while we swoon at his stars in their gorgeous firmament, we are also the heirs to those who did all the work, those who built the Downtons and the plantations.

We know a profound truth behind all their costly beauty and misery. Every stately home, in every land, belongs to us too.

The rise of flat caps: genuinely classless – or a way for wealthy men to seem authentic?



The rise of flat caps: genuinely classless – or a way for wealthy men to seem authentic?

Finally, the ONS has added the humble flat cap to its annual list of the things Britons are spending their money on. As an avid wearer, I know it’s the only way to get ahead

Dan Kuper
@kuperdankuper
Tue 12 Mar 2019 18.01 GMTFirst published on Tue 12 Mar 2019 16.46 GMT

Every year the Office for National Statistics updates the shopping basket with which it tries to sum up Britain’s spending habits. Such outmoded fripperies as three-piece suites, CD players and crockery sets are out. But for 2019, for the first time, the cap fits – because alongside herbal teas and home-assistant systems such as the Amazon Echo, the humble flat cap has joined the statistical shopping party.

Ideally partnered with whippets and mufflers in northern England, or football rattles and toothless grins, the flat cap was for many years associated with the TV chimney-clamberer Fred Dibnah who, according to his widow, kept his on the bedpost along with his watch chain and bought three in anticipation of his wedding. In the past 10 years, the cap has enjoyed a renaissance, taken up by a succession of lads-made-good – Guy Ritchie, David Beckham, Alex James and Idris Elba – before finding its ultimate expression in the Brummie yelling-and-chivving drama Peaky Blinders, where it serves as a suitable place to stash razor blades.

But while the flat cap might seem an easy way for wealthy men to signal working-class authenticity, it is in fact one of the few genuinely classless items of clothing. Gents on a pheasant shoot have worn the cap as much as bootleggers on a raid. And this flexibility – along with the nation’s enduring fondness for the understated – may be why it has endured through lean times to bounce back into the public affection.

Supposedly, the flat cap first became popular after a short-lived law passed in England in 1571 that obliged everyone to wear a woollen hat to boost the wool trade, which does perhaps explain its utilitarian form. It is hard to think of how you would make a hat less showy than the flat cap, which is, after all, pretty much what would result if you just dragged some fabric over your head, added a minimal brim and fixed it with a band.

Comfortable and practical for hard graft, while offering a quick-and-easy dash of style, it’s the hat that can do it all – although there are apparently limits. BBC News reported recently that a man had been asked to take off his flat cap on entering a Tesco in Dudley, West Midlands. He point-blank refused; I think we can all take our hats off to him.

As a flat-cap sporter myself, the rise and rise of the hat brings mixed feelings. The true aficionado has already foregone the endless parade of high-street versions; once the Beckham family started wearing them en masse, it was time to look further afield. The Italians do a lovely version. Swap Cillian Murphy for Godfather-era Al Pacino; that’s how to get ahead.

Tuesday 17 September 2019

Kray twins / Video : Krays Lords of the Underworld 1997 Channel 4 documentary Pt1




Letters shed new light on Kray twins scandal
Newly-discovered letters revealing the true nature of the relationship between Ronnie Kray, the crime boss, and Lord Boothby, the Conservative peer, are being offered for sale.
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent8:30AM BST 26 Jul 2009

The previously-unseen notes appear to show that Boothby, a former MP and aide to Winston Churchill, wrongly received a £40,000 libel payout from a newspaper that had linked him with the Krays.

Allegations surrounding "the peer and the gangster" emerged in 1964 at a time when Westminster was still reeling from the Profumo Affair.

When the Sunday Mirror reported in July 1964 that Scotland Yard was investigating a homosexual relationship between an unnamed peer and a major figure in the criminal underworld, suspicion fell on Boothby and on Kray, who, together with his twin brother Reggie, was building a reputation for running protection rackets and dishing out violence to those who stood in his way.

However, Boothby chose to go public with a letter to The Times in which he denied being homosexual and stated that he had only ever met Kray three times, always to discuss business matters and always in the company of other people.

Facing the threat of a libel defeat, the Sunday Mirror issued an apology to the peer and paid out £40,000, equivalent to £500,000 today. The newspaper's editor, Reg Payne, lost his job over the affair.

Yet a newly-uncovered letter sent by Boothby to Kray shows that the two men were friends, and were making social arrangements, more than a year before the peer won his payout.

On notepaper carrying his address in Eaton Square, Belgravia, Boothby wrote to Kray on June 6, 1963: "Thank you for your postcard. I very nearly went to Jersey myself, as I have never been there, and hear from so many people that it is quite delightful.

"If you are free tomorrow evening between six and seven, do come round for a drink and a chat."

The brief note is signed: "Ever sincerely, Boothby."

The letters, which are being put up for sale by an anonymous vendor, shed new light on one of the murkiest episodes in the career of the Kray twins.

Since described as the "pervert peer" in reference to his sexual proclivities, Boothby was shouted down in the Lords in February 1965 for demanding that the Krays should be released on bail after their arrest and charge for running the protection racket.

Another letter from Boothby to Kray, dated April 1965 on House of Lords notepaper, says: "I have had a great many letters congratulating me on the stand I took in the House of Lords on your behalf; and that some of their Lordships are now a bit ashamed of the treatment they gave me."

It adds: "I think that they will now leave you alone. And you never can say that I haven't done my best."

Each letter is expected to reach an estimated £1,000 to £1,500 when sold alongside other Kray memorabilia at Mullock's auctioneers in Ludlow, Shropshire, on August 13.

Richard Westwood-Brookes, the auctioneer, said: "These original letters have never been seen in public before and provide sensational new evidence on the relationship between Lord Boothby and Ron Kray.

"They have implications for the high-profile case Boothby won against the Mirror in the 1960s.

"It is clear that Boothby is inviting Kray round, and this proves the peer lied in his letter to The Times defending himself. It also proves the men were friends long before Boothby acknowledged."

Another piece of Kray memorabilia sold by Mullock's earlier this year, two original police mugshots of the twins aged about 18, was estimated at £100 but reached £7,500.

Lord Boothby died in 1986. Ronnie Kray, who suffered from schizophrenia, was jailed for life for two murders in 1969 along with Reggie; he died in Broadmoor Hospital in 1995.






Ronald "Ronnie" Kray (24 October 1933 – 17 March 1995) and Reginald "Reggie" Kray (24 October 1933 – 1 October 2000), twin brothers, were English criminals, the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in the East End of London during the 1950s and 1960s. With their gang, known as "The Firm", the Krays were involved in murder, armed robbery, arson, protection rackets and assaults.

As West End nightclub owners, the Krays mixed with politicians and prominent entertainers such as Diana Dors, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. In the 1960s, they became celebrities, being photographed by David Bailey and interviewed on television.

The Krays were arrested on 8 May 1968 and convicted in 1969, as a result of the efforts of detectives led by Detective Superintendent Leonard "Nipper" Read. Each was sentenced to life imprisonment. Ronnie remained in Broadmoor Hospital until his death on 17 March 1995 from a heart attack; Reggie was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2000, eight and a half weeks before he died of bladder cancer.

Early life
Ronald "Ron" and Reginald "Reggie" Kray were born on 24 October 1933 in Haggerston, East London, to Charles David Kray (10 March 1907 – 8 March 1983), a wardrobe dealer,[4] and Violet Annie Lee (5 August 1909 – 4 August 1982). The brothers were twins, with Reggie born ten minutes before Ronnie. Their parents already had a six-year-old son, Charles James (9 July 1927 – 4 April 2000).A sister, Violet (born 1929), died in infancy.[6] When the twins were three years old, they contracted diphtheria.

The twins first attended Wood Close School in Brick Lane, and then Daniel Street School. In 1938, the Kray family moved from Stean Street in Haggerston to 178 Vallance Road in Bethnal Green.

The influence of their maternal grandfather, Jimmy "Cannonball" Lee, caused the brothers to take up amateur boxing, then a popular pastime for working class boys in the East End. Sibling rivalry spurred them on, and both achieved some success.

Military service
The Krays were called up to do National Service in the British Army in March 1952. Although the pair reported to the depot of the Royal Fusiliers at the Tower of London, they attempted to leave after only a few minutes. When the corporal in charge tried to stop them he was seriously injured by Ronnie Kray who punched him on the jaw. The Krays walked back to their East End home. They were arrested the next morning by the police and turned over to the army.

In September while absent without leave again they assaulted a police constable who tried to arrest them. They became among the last prisoners to be held at the Tower of London before being transferred to Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset for a month to await court-martial. After they were convicted, both were sent to the Buffs' Home Counties Brigade Depot jail in Canterbury, Kent. However, when it became clear they were both to be dishonourable discharged from the army, the Krays' behaviour became violently worse. They dominated the exercise areas outside their one-man cells, threw tantrums, emptied a latrine bucket over a sergeant, dumped a canteen full of hot tea on another guard, handcuffed a guard to their prison bars with a pair of stolen cuffs and set their bedding on fire. Eventually they were moved to a communal cell where they assaulted their guard with a vase and escaped. After being quickly recaptured, they spent their last night in military custody in Canterbury drinking cider, eating crisps and smoking cigarillos courtesy of the young national servicemen acting as their guards. The next day the Krays were transferred to a civilian prison to serve sentences for the crimes they committed while AWOL.

Criminal careers
Nightclub owners
Their criminal records and dishonourable discharges ended their boxing careers, and the brothers turned to crime full-time. They bought a run-down snooker club in Mile End where they started several protection rackets. By the end of the 1950s, the Krays were working for Jay Murray from Liverpool and were involved in hijacking, armed robbery and arson, through which they acquired other clubs and properties. In 1960, Ronnie Kray was imprisoned for 18 months for running a protection racket and related threats. While Ronnie was in prison, Peter Rachman, head of a landlord operation, gave Reggie a nightclub called Esmeralda's Barn on the Knightsbridge end of Wilton Place next to a bistro called Joan's Kitchen. The location is where the Berkeley Hotel now stands.

This increased the Krays' influence in the West End by making them celebrities as well as criminals. The Kray twins adopted a norm according to which anyone who failed to show due respect would be severely punished. They were assisted by a banker named Alan Cooper who wanted protection against the Krays' rivals, the Richardsons, based in South London.

Celebrity status
In the 1960s, the Kray brothers were widely seen as prosperous and charming celebrity nightclub owners and were part of the Swinging London scene. A large part of their fame was due to their non-criminal activities as popular figures on the celebrity circuit, being photographed by David Bailey on more than one occasion and socialising with lords, MPs, socialites and show business characters, including actors George Raft, Judy Garland, Diana Dors and Barbara Windsor.

They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world... and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable...

– Ronnie Kray, in his autobiography My Story
Lord Boothby and Tom Driberg
The Krays also came to public attention in July 1964 when an exposé in the tabloid newspaper Sunday Mirror insinuated that Ronnie had conceived a sexual relationship with Lord Boothby, a Conservative politician,[16] at a time when sex between men was still a criminal offence in the U.K. Although no names were printed in the piece, the twins threatened the journalists involved, and Boothby threatened to sue the newspaper with the help of Labour Party leader Harold Wilson's solicitor Arnold Goodman (Wilson wanted to protect the reputation of Labour MP Tom Driberg, a relatively open gay man known to associate with both Boothby and Ronnie Kray, just weeks ahead of a pending General Election which Labour was hoping to win). In the face of this, the newspaper backed down, sacking its editor, printing an apology and paying Boothby £40,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Because of this, other newspapers were unwilling to expose the Krays' connections and criminal activities. Much later, Channel 4 established the truth of the allegations and released a documentary on the subject called The Gangster and the Pervert Peer (2009).

The police investigated the Krays on several occasions, but the brothers' reputation for violence made witnesses afraid to testify. There was also a problem for both main political parties. The Conservative Party was unwilling to press the police to end the Krays' power for fear that the Boothby connection would again be publicised, and the Labour Party, in power from October 1964, but with a wafer-thin majority in the House of Commons and the prospect of another General Election needing to be called in the very near future, did not want Driberg's connections to Ronnie Kray (and his sexual predilections) to get into the public realm.

George Cornell

Ronnie Kray shot and killed George Cornell, a member of the Richardson Gang (a rival South London gang), at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel on 9 March 1966. The day before, there had been a shoot-out at Mr. Smith's, a nightclub in Catford, involving the Richardson gang and Richard Hart, an associate of the Krays, who was shot dead. This public shoot-out led to the arrest of nearly all the Richardson gang. Cornell, by chance, was not present at the club during the shoot-out and was not arrested. Whilst visiting the hospital to check up on his friends, he randomly chose to visit the Blind Beggar pub, only a mile away from where the Krays lived.

Ronnie was drinking in another pub when he learned of Cornell's whereabouts. He went there with his driver "Scotch Jack" John Dickson and his assistant Ian Barrie. Ronnie went into the pub with Barrie, walked straight to Cornell and shot him in the head in public view. Barrie, confused by what happened, fired five shots in the air warning the public not to report what had happened to the police. Just before he was shot, Cornell remarked, "Well, look who's here." He died at 3:00am in hospital.

Ronnie Kray was already suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the killing.

According to some sources, Ronnie killed Cornell because Cornell referred to him as a "fat poof" (a derogatory term for gay men) during a confrontation between the Krays and the Richardson gang at the Astor Club on Christmas Day 1965.

Richardson gang member "Mad" Frankie Fraser was tried for the murder of Richard Hart at Mr. Smith's, but was found not guilty. Richardson gang member Ray "the Belgian" Cullinane testified that he saw Cornell kicking Hart. Witnesses would not co-operate with the police in the murder case due to intimidation, and the trial ended inconclusively without pointing to any suspect in particular.

Frank Mitchell
On 12 December 1966, the Krays helped Frank Mitchell, "the Mad Axeman", to escape from Dartmoor Prison. Ronnie had befriended Mitchell while they served time together in Wandsworth Prison. Mitchell felt that the authorities should review his case for parole, so Ronnie thought that he would be doing him a favour by getting him out of Dartmoor, highlighting his case in the media and forcing the authorities to act.

Once Mitchell was out of Dartmoor, the Krays held him at a friend's flat in Barking Road, East Ham. He was a large man with a mental disorder, and he was difficult to control. He disappeared, but the Krays were acquitted of his murder.Freddie Foreman, a friend of the Krays, claimed in his autobiography Respect that he shot Mitchell dead as a favour to the twins and disposed of his body at sea.

Jack "the Hat" McVitie
The Krays' criminal activities remained hidden behind both their celebrity status and seemingly legitimate businesses. Reggie was allegedly encouraged by his brother in October 1967, four months after the suicide of his wife, Frances, to kill Jack "the Hat" McVitie, a minor member of the Kray gang who had failed to fulfil a £1000 contract, £500 of which had been paid to him in advance, to kill their financial advisor, Leslie Payne. McVitie was lured to a basement flat in Evering Road, Stoke Newington on the pretence of a party. Upon entering the premises, he saw Ronnie Kray seated in the front room. As Ronnie approached him, he let loose a barrage of verbal abuse and cut him below his eye with a piece of broken glass. It is believed that an argument then broke out between the twins and McVitie. As the argument got more heated, Reggie Kray pointed a handgun at McVitie's head and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun failed to discharge.

McVitie was then held in a bear hug by the twins' cousin, Ronnie Hart, and Reggie Kray was handed a carving knife. He then stabbed McVitie in the face and stomach, driving the blade into his neck while twisting the knife, not stopping even as McVitie lay on the floor dying. Reggie had committed a very public murder, against someone who many members of the Firm felt did not deserve to die. In an interview in 2000, shortly after Reggie's death, Freddie Foreman revealed that McVitie had a reputation for leaving carnage behind him due to his habitual consumption of drugs and heavy drinking, and his having in the past threatened to harm the twins and their family.

Tony and Chris Lambrianou and Ronnie Bender helped clear up the evidence of this crime, and attempted to assist in the disposal of the body. With McVitie's body being too big to fit in the boot of the car, the body was wrapped in an eiderdown and put in the back seat of a car. Tony Lambrianou drove the car with the body and Chris Lambrianou and Bender followed behind. Crossing the Blackwall tunnel, Chris lost Tony's car, and spent up to fifteen minutes looking around Rotherhithe area. They eventually found Tony, outside St Mary's Church, where he had run out of fuel with McVitie's body still inside the car. With no alternative than to dump the corpse in the churchyard, and attempt to plant a gang south of the River Thames, the body was left in the car and the three gangsters returned home. Bender then went on to phone Charlie Kray informing them that it had been dealt with. However, upon finding out where they had left McVitie's corpse, the twins were livid and desperately phoned Foreman, who was then running a pub in Southwark, to see if he could dispose of the body. With dawn breaking, Foreman found the car, broke into it and drove the body to Newhaven where, with the help of a trawlerman, the body was bound with chicken wire and dumped in the English Channel.

This event started turning many people against the Krays, and some were prepared to testify to Scotland Yard as to what had happened, fearing that what happened to McVitie could easily happen to them.

Arrest and trial

Photograph of London gangster Reginald Kray (second from left) taken in the months leading up to his trial in 1968. The evidence from this file and others resulted in him and his brother Ronald being sentenced to life imprisonment.
Detective Chief Superintendent Leonard "Nipper" Read of Scotland Yard was promoted to the Murder Squad and his first assignment was to bring down the Kray twins. It was not his first involvement with them. During the first half of 1964, Read had been investigating their activities, but publicity and official denials of Ron's relationship with Boothby made the evidence that he collected useless. Read went after the twins with renewed activity in 1967, but frequently came up against the East End "wall of silence" which discouraged anyone from providing information to the police.

Nevertheless, by the end of 1967 Read had built up enough evidence against the Krays. Witness statements incriminated them, as did other evidence, but none made a convincing case on any one charge.

Early in 1968, the Krays employed Alan Bruce Cooper who sent Paul Elvey to Glasgow to buy explosives for a car bomb. Elvey was the radio engineer who put Radio Sutch on the air in 1964, later renamed Radio City. After police detained him in Scotland, he confessed to being involved in three murder attempts. The evidence was weakened by Cooper, who claimed that he was an agent for the US Treasury Department investigating links between the American Mafia and the Kray gang. The botched murders[which?] were his attempt to put the blame on the Krays. Cooper was being employed as a source by one of Read's superior officers, and Read tried using him as a trap for the Krays, but they avoided him.

Conviction and imprisonment

Eventually, Scotland Yard decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence already collected, in the hope that other witnesses would be forthcoming once the Krays were in custody. On 8 May 1968, the Krays and 15 other members of the Firm were arrested. Exceptional circumstances were put in place so as to stop any possible co-operation between any of the accused. Nipper Read then secretly interviewed each of the arrested, and offered each member of the Firm a deal if they testified against the others. Whilst in prison, the Krays had come up with a plan, which included having Scotch Jack Dickson to confess to the murder of Cornell, Ronnie Hart to take the McVitie murder and Albert Donoghue to stand for Mitchell.

Donoghue told the twins directly that he wasn't prepared to be cajoled into pleading guilty, to the anger of the twins. He then informed Read via his mother that he was ready to cooperate. Read set up another secret interview, and Donoghue was the first to tell the police everything that he knew.

Ronnie Hart had initially not been arrested, and was not a name initially sought after by the police. With Donoghue's testimony, Hart was hunted down, found and arrested. Offering the same terms as the others arrested, Hart then told Read everything that had happened during McVitie's murder, although he did not know anything about what happened to the body. This was the first time that the police knew exactly who was involved, and offered them a solid case to prosecute the twins for McVitie's murder.

Although Read knew for certain that Ronnie Kray had murdered George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub no one had been prepared to testify against the twins out of fear. Upon finding out the twins intended to cajole him, 'Scotch Jack' Dickson also turned in everything he knew about Cornell's murder. Although not a witness to the actual murder he was an accessory, having driven Ronnie Kray and Ian Barrie to the pub. The police still needed an actual witness to the murder. They then managed to track down the barmaid who was working in the pub at the time of the murder, gave her a secret identity and she testified to seeing Ronnie kill Cornell.

Frank Mitchell's escape and disappearance was much harder to obtain evidence for, since the majority of those arrested were not involved with his planned escape and disappearance. Read decided to proceed with the case and have a separate trial for Mitchell once the twins had been convicted.

The twins' defence under their counsel John Platts-Mills, QC consisted of flat denials of all charges and discrediting witnesses by pointing out their criminal past. Justice Melford Stevenson said: "In my view, society has earned a rest from your activities." It was the longest murder hearing in history of British criminal justice., during which Justice Melford Stevenson stated of the sentences "which I recommend should not be less than thirty years." In March 1969, both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of Cornell and McVitie, the longest sentences ever passed at the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court, London) for murder. Their brother Charlie was imprisoned for ten years for his part in the murders.

Later years
Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed, under heavy police guard, to attend the funeral service of their mother Violet on 11 August 1982 following her death from cancer a week earlier. They were not, however, allowed to attend her burial in the Kray family plot at Chingford Mount Cemetery. The funeral was attended by celebrities including Diana Dors and underworld figures known to the Krays. To avoid the publicity that had surrounded their mother's funeral, the twins did not ask for permission to attend their father's funeral in March 1983.

Ronnie Kray was a Category A prisoner, denied almost all liberties and not allowed to mix with other prisoners. He was eventually certified insane, his paranoid schizophrenia being tempered with constant medication; in 1979 he was committed and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire. Reggie Kray, constantly being refused parole, was locked up in Maidstone Prison for 8 years (Category B). In 1997, he was transferred to the Category C Wayland Prison in Norfolk.

In 1985, officials at Broadmoor Hospital discovered a business card of Ronnie's that led to evidence that the twins, from separate institutions, were operating Krayleigh Enterprises (a "lucrative bodyguard and 'protection' business for Hollywood stars") together with their older brother Charlie Kray and an accomplice at large. Among their clients was Frank Sinatra, who hired 18 bodyguards from Krayleigh Enterprises on his visit to the 1985 Wimbledon Championships. Documents released under Freedom of Information laws revealed that although officials were concerned about this operation, they believed that there was no legal basis to shut it down.

Documentary; The Krays And The Pervert Peer

Legend Official Trailer #1 (2015) Tom Hardy, Emily Browning Crime Thrill...

BARBOUR & TWEED













Monday 16 September 2019

The Secret Garden / Philosophy in the garden / Top 10 books about gardens / VIDEO:The Secret Garden (1993) - Original Theatrical Trailer





At the turn of the 20th century, Mary Lennox is a sickly, neglected and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her and make an effort to ignore the girl. She is cared for primarily by native servants, who allow her to become spoiled, aggressive, and self-centered. After a cholera epidemic kills her parents and the servants, Mary is discovered alive but alone in the empty house. She briefly lives with an English clergyman and his family in India before she is sent to Yorkshire, in England, to live with Archibald Craven, a wealthy, hunchbacked uncle whom she has never met, at his isolated house, Misselthwaite Manor.

At first, Mary is as obnoxious and sour as ever. She dislikes her new home, the people living in it, and most of all, the bleak moor on which it sits. However, a good-natured maid named Martha Sowerby tells Mary about her aunt, the late Lilias Craven, who would spend hours in a private walled garden growing roses. Mrs Craven died after an accident in the garden, and the devastated Mr. Craven locked the garden and buried the key. Mary becomes interested in finding the secret garden herself, and her ill manners begin to soften as a result. Soon she comes to enjoy the company of Martha, the gardener Ben Weatherstaff, and a friendly robin redbreast. Her health and attitude improve with the bracing Yorkshire air, and she grows stronger as she explores the moor and plays with a skipping rope that Mrs Sowerby buys for her. Mary wonders about both the secret garden and the mysterious cries that echo through the house at night.

As Mary explores the gardens, her robin draws her attention to an area of disturbed soil. Here Mary finds the key to the locked garden and eventually the door to the garden itself. She asks Martha for garden tools, which Martha sends with Dickon, her 12-year-old brother who spends most of his time out on the moors. Mary and Dickon take a liking to each other, as Dickon has a kind way with animals and a good nature. Eager to absorb his gardening knowledge, Mary tells him about the secret garden.

One night, Mary hears the cries once more and decides to follow them through the house. She is startled when she finds a boy her age named Colin, who lives in a hidden bedroom. She soon discovers that they are cousins, Colin being the son of Mr and Mrs Craven, and that he suffers from an unspecified spinal problem which precludes him from walking and causes him to spend most of his time in bed. Mary visits him every day that week, distracting him from his troubles with stories of the moor, Dickon and his animals, and the secret garden. Mary finally confides that she has access to the secret garden, and Colin asks to see it. Colin is put into his wheelchair and brought outside into the secret garden. It is the first time he has been outdoors for years.

While in the garden, the children look up to see Ben Weatherstaff looking over the wall on a ladder. Startled and angry to find the children in the secret garden, he admits that he believed Colin to be a cripple. Colin stands up from his chair and finds that his legs are fine, though weak from long disuse. Colin and Mary soon spend almost every day in the garden, sometimes with Dickon as company. The children and Ben conspire to keep Colin's recovering health a secret from the other staff, so as to surprise his father, who is travelling abroad. As Colin's health improves, his father sees a coinciding increase in spirits, culminating in a dream where his late wife calls to him from inside the garden. When he receives a letter from Mrs Sowerby, he takes the opportunity finally to return home. He walks the outer garden wall in his wife's memory, but hears voices inside, finds the door unlocked, and is shocked to see the garden in full bloom, and his son healthy, having just won a race against the other two children. The servants watch, stunned, as Mr Craven and Colin walk back to the manor together.





Why did Marcel Proust have bonsai beside his bed? What was Jane Austen doing, coveting an apricot? How was Friedrich Nietzsche inspired by his thought tree'? In Philosophy in the Garden, Damon Young explores one of literature's most intimate relationships: authors and their gardens. For some, the garden provided a retreat from workaday labour; for others, solitude's quiet counsel. For all, it played a philosophical role: giving their ideas a new life. Philosophy in the Garden reveals the profound thoughts discovered in parks, backyards, and pot-plants. It does not provide tips for mowing overgrown couch grass, or mulching a dry Japanese maple. It is a philosophical companion to the garden's labours and joys.

REVIEWS
[A] fascinating journey through the lives and creativity of writers ... It is an intimate, charming book.' * Sensibilities: The Journal of the Jane Austen Society of Australia * An absolute joy of a book - I couldn't put it down. Its prose is as careful and lovely as a beautifully tended garden.' -- Nikki Gemmell, columnist for The Australian and author of Honestly [E]njoyable and erudite.' * Los Angeles Review of Books * [W]ith his vivid, critical, and, sometimes loving, attention to detail, he brings to new life writers and philosophers that anyone with a liberal arts education thought they already knew ... Young's enthusiasm, compassion, and moments of personal insight are infectious.' * Island * Young has managed the difficult task of creating an academically rigorous work while maintaining a light and engaging tone throughout the book, which is actually a highly intellectual look at the complex relationship between humanity and nature.' * Voice * [T]houghtful and highly entertaining.' * Limelight * [T]ake the plunge: the writing is fresh, the observations discursive, and the garden ... placed front and centre.' * Australian Garden History * Young helps readers reflect on the value of the garden beyond a place to hold a backyard barbecue ... [He] writes engagingly, showing off his skills as a storyteller ... [A]n intriguing little book.' * Weekly Times * [M]ore my kind of gardening' than the digging type ... Particularly interesting is his account of Jane Austen's creative relationship with her Hampshire gardens.' * The Lady * [Philosophy in the Garden] is a stimulating read where individual truths may well bloom ... [T]his volume is packed with brilliant literary info.' * The West Australian * Reading this book is like strolling in a luxuriant garden with an erudite friend, although one of a literary rather than horticultural bent ... Think of this engaging little book ... as a philosophical primer, an approachable introduction to ideas about gardens and the natural world.' * The Age * Young is an engaging writer. His technique is fluent and stylish and never marred by cliches or cliched thinking. He is sincere, a great relief from the ocean of irony in which we live, and intellectually questing, a relief from that other ocean of schmaltzy platitude.' * The Australian * This beautiful looking book is a wonderfully refreshing mix of literary gossip, historical exposition and philosophical reflection, and I never wanted it to end.' -- Walter Mason, author of Destination Saigon I found it utterly engaging and most illuminating. His style is very readable and full of wit and personality.' * Kate Forsyth, author of The Wild Girl * I've been looking forward to Damon Young's [Philosophy in the Garden] ... all year. Part philosophy lesson, part literary companion, it's a contemplative stroll through writers' relationships with their gardens.' * Charlotte Wood, author of Animal People * [T]hought provoking indeed.' * The Good Book Guide * [T]hought-provoking ... fine book.' * Gardens Illustrated * Young writes with a delightful combination of humour and insight.' * The Literary Review * A brilliant philosophical and literary meditation that helps us rethink our relationship with the natural world - and with ourselves.' * Roman Krznaric, author of Empathy * A gentle dig for ideas about how to live - this book will grow your mind and put a glow in your cheeks.' * Deborah Levy, author of Swimming Home * Like a garden coming into spring ... tremendous vistas of thought.' * The Daily Telegraph * [S]prightly and stimulating.' * The Spectator * Erudite, yet witty and accessible, [Philosophy in the Garden] is intellectual history at its most completely pleasurable.' * Oliver Burkeman, author of The Antidote * This is a gardening book that takes readers not on a walk around great estates but on a tour of great minds ... It's a lovely extension on the notion that gardens make you contemplative and in working with the soil you see life's big picture.' * The Daily Telegraph 


Top 10 books about gardens

From theatres of social snobbery to fiery manifestos for rewilding, these volumes show that gardening can be sexy, scary and sometimes scandalous

Vivian Swift
Wed 20 Jul 2016 15.28 BSTLast modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 12.50 GMT

The problem with most garden books is that they are written by gardeners. Gardeners have a habit of filling pages and pages with homework-sounding words such as rhizosphere and loamy and pH, which isn’t even a word. It all sounds as exciting as algebra.

The other problem with garden books is that so many of them blabber on about an idea of nature that came into fashion in the time of hoop skirts and whalebone corsets. I’m talking about the ideology of the famed 19th-century conservationist John Muir, who wrote about wilderness as a place “to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the soul”. I want to read about this fey “sacred space” concept of nature about as much as I want to slap on a lace bonnet and ride side-saddle.

Wouldn’t it be great to read a garden book that didn’t have the personality of a maiden aunt? Yes, it would! And that’s why I, a dedicated non-gardener, wrote Gardens of Awe and Folly: to show that gardens aren’t demure! Gardens are sexy, and scary, sometimes even scandalous, and best of all, gardens are the perfect settings to serve up ice-cold cocktails and red-hot gossip … and any one of these books is the equivalent of that kind of garden party.

1. Rambunctious Garden by Emma Marris
This book will set your hair on fire if you are the least bit sentimental about the sanctity of capital-n Nature. Marris, a science journalist and metaphorical flame-thrower (from Seattle), has taken the gutsy stance that the environmental purity imagined by John Muir and his ilk vanished about 6,000 years ago with the planting of the first gardens in Mesopotamia, and can’t be restored. Happily, she offers a new, improved nature with her stories of radical rewilding, human-assisted migration of flora and fauna, and – gasp – the ecological godsend of invasive and exotic species. Oh yes, she goes there.

2. The Gardener of Versailles: My Life in the World’s Grandest Garden by Alain Baraton
Baraton has been tending the Grand Parc de Versailles for more than 40 years, beginning as a ditch-digging gardener’s assistant in 1976 and, since 1982, as its gardener-in-chief. In this charmingly ardent memoir, Baraton spices things up with advice on the gardens’ best hidden corners for trysting, lush descriptions of nightfall in the royal groves, and soulful odes to the mighty fallen (trees, kings, and previous gardeners-in-chief). Baraton is proof that there is such a thing as a debonair gardener.

3. Sunlight on the Lawn by Beverley Nichols
Any of the dozen garden books written between 1932 and 1968 by England’s most lovable snob would have been a perfect fit for this list. But Sunlight on the Lawn, from 1956, stands out for having the tastiest horticultural titbits dished up with the most generous helpings of the well-mannered malice at which the British gentry excels. Here is the ever-so-genteel Rose, thrusting honey-dipped insults at Miss Emily for her weeding methods, who parries with awe-inspiring sarcasm. Behind their backs is Mr Nichols, who lives for such scandals, stirring things up with his pronouncements on vulgar garden designs and tacky floral trends. Delicious.

4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Here is a garden that is not only scary, but lethal. You probably already know the story of the orphaned Mary Lennox, “the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen”, and her rehabilitation of the spooky walled-in garden with the killer tree (the one the late Mrs Craven fell out of). But you probably did not know that Hodgson Burnett wrote this iconic English fable in the US, in her home on Long Island, less than three miles from where I live. This fact inspired me to believe that great garden writers can come from anywhere, even one’s own dull suburb.

5. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Another classic tale from Long Island. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in exile from his native France at the outbreak of the second world war, found himself living here, “a haven for writing, the best place I have ever had anywhere in my life”. And voila: the tale of the Rose, beloved of the title’s sensitive alien, was born. Even more heartening to me, as a self-taught watercolourist, is Saint-Exupéry’s artwork, which is, frankly, terrible, and yet beloved around the world.

6. Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education by Michael Pollan
Pollan writes about dirt (dirt!) and is utterly fascinating, even to a reader who has previously stated that this is the exact subject that she most dreads in garden books. That’s because dirt, like every other topic Pollan addresses (roses, weeds, trees, etc), is only the jumping-off point for a flight of fancy that alights on political history, popular culture and class distinctions, all the while being both highly entertaining and deeply thought-provoking. Surprise surprise, there is a whole lot more to a garden than its planting list. When I wrote Gardens of Awe and Folly this is the kind of value-added storytelling that I did my best to emulate, because outright plagiarism is wrong.

7. Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi
OK, this is the most boring title ever for a garden book. Which means that you will be all that more pleased by the verve and eccentricity of its author. As the American ex-wife of a Romanian baron, Perenyi has gardened in both the old and new worlds, in war and poverty, peace and affluence, and, lastly, Connecticut. Is she cultured and crotchety? Digressive and droll? Brainy and brash? Is she ever. Just read the chapter Onions, and I guarantee you will be as smitten with the lady as she is with scallions. One of my most treasured possessions is a photograph of Perenyi seated in her backyard parterre, a highball in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She lived to be 91, which goes to show how healthful the gardening lifestyle must be.

8. Our Life in Gardens by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd
Nothing could convince me that I might be missing something by not having a garden of my own – except maybe this book. This cosy memoir shows the authors to be the most companionable and down-to-earth of garden world paragons. Gazing at a portrait of artist Rubens Peale, the authors observe that the subject is holding one of the most beautiful flowerpots they’ve ever seen. Well, if puttering about in a herbaceous border would make me half as refined, witty, and personable, then I’d gladly grab a hoe and have at it.

9. The Potting-Shed Papers by Charles Elliott
I began my education as a garden writer by devouring this collection of 31 essays on gardens, gardeners, and garden history. Elliott roams to wherever his hyperactive curiosity takes him, from the invention of the lawnmower in England to the discovery of the blue poppy in China, with stops in the gardening cultures of Holland and Japan and, oh, almost everywhere else. Read this book and learn important stuff about the gardening mindset, such as how much determination it takes to grow a California sequoia in Gloucestershire, and how nutty and wonderful it is that anyone ever tried to do it in the first place.

10. The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the 21st Century by Gabriel Hemery, illustrated by Sarah Simblet
Lucky you, Guardian readers, to have been born at the right time to feast your eyes on this highly anticipated followup to the illustrious Sylva of 1664! As in the original, this is an exhortation to Britons to cherish and maintain their woodlands, with Hemery writing movingly about forests as both artefacts of civilisation and celebrations of tree-dom in your mystically green and astoundingly pleasant land.





At the turn of the 20th century, Mary Lennox is a sickly, neglected and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her and make an effort to ignore the girl. She is cared for primarily by native servants, who allow her to become spoiled, aggressive, and self-centered. After a cholera epidemic kills her parents and the servants, Mary is discovered alive but alone in the empty house. She briefly lives with an English clergyman and his family in India before she is sent to Yorkshire, in England, to live with Archibald Craven, a wealthy, hunchbacked uncle whom she has never met, at his isolated house, Misselthwaite Manor.

At first, Mary is as obnoxious and sour as ever. She dislikes her new home, the people living in it, and most of all, the bleak moor on which it sits. However, a good-natured maid named Martha Sowerby tells Mary about her aunt, the late Lilias Craven, who would spend hours in a private walled garden growing roses. Mrs Craven died after an accident in the garden, and the devastated Mr. Craven locked the garden and buried the key. Mary becomes interested in finding the secret garden herself, and her ill manners begin to soften as a result. Soon she comes to enjoy the company of Martha, the gardener Ben Weatherstaff, and a friendly robin redbreast. Her health and attitude improve with the bracing Yorkshire air, and she grows stronger as she explores the moor and plays with a skipping rope that Mrs Sowerby buys for her. Mary wonders about both the secret garden and the mysterious cries that echo through the house at night.

As Mary explores the gardens, her robin draws her attention to an area of disturbed soil. Here Mary finds the key to the locked garden and eventually the door to the garden itself. She asks Martha for garden tools, which Martha sends with Dickon, her 12-year-old brother who spends most of his time out on the moors. Mary and Dickon take a liking to each other, as Dickon has a kind way with animals and a good nature. Eager to absorb his gardening knowledge, Mary tells him about the secret garden.

One night, Mary hears the cries once more and decides to follow them through the house. She is startled when she finds a boy her age named Colin, who lives in a hidden bedroom. She soon discovers that they are cousins, Colin being the son of Mr and Mrs Craven, and that he suffers from an unspecified spinal problem which precludes him from walking and causes him to spend most of his time in bed. Mary visits him every day that week, distracting him from his troubles with stories of the moor, Dickon and his animals, and the secret garden. Mary finally confides that she has access to the secret garden, and Colin asks to see it. Colin is put into his wheelchair and brought outside into the secret garden. It is the first time he has been outdoors for years.

While in the garden, the children look up to see Ben Weatherstaff looking over the wall on a ladder. Startled and angry to find the children in the secret garden, he admits that he believed Colin to be a cripple. Colin stands up from his chair and finds that his legs are fine, though weak from long disuse. Colin and Mary soon spend almost every day in the garden, sometimes with Dickon as company. The children and Ben conspire to keep Colin's recovering health a secret from the other staff, so as to surprise his father, who is travelling abroad. As Colin's health improves, his father sees a coinciding increase in spirits, culminating in a dream where his late wife calls to him from inside the garden. When he receives a letter from Mrs Sowerby, he takes the opportunity finally to return home. He walks the outer garden wall in his wife's memory, but hears voices inside, finds the door unlocked, and is shocked to see the garden in full bloom, and his son healthy, having just won a race against the other two children. The servants watch, stunned, as Mr Craven and Colin walk back to the manor together.