The first full account of the beautiful, innocent young woman who married Reggie Kray - and became trapped in the violent and terrifying world of the Kray Twins.She was young, very beautiful and had everything to live for - but the life of Frances Shea, wife of Reggie Kray, remains one of the most tragic stories of the Sixties.Courted by Reggie as a schoolgirl, Frances was lured into an outwardly glamorous world of nightclubs, expensive clothes and showbiz parties. Yet she very soon discovered the real world of the Kray Twins, the hidden, twisted world where violence, drink, drugs and terror dominated everything.Frances broke away and briefly enjoyed other relationships, struggling to maintain her freedom. Yet Reggie would never let her go. Paranoid and obsessive, he monitored her every move, stalking her night and day.By the time she married Reggie in their ‘Wedding of the Year’ in 1965, Frances and her family had become inextricably linked with the Twins’ downward spiral from gangland extortion and brutality into senseless murder and mayhem.Trapped, desperate and unable to cope, just two years later Frances died from a drug overdose.Only now, 50 years later, in a revealing and shocking examination of the facts, the truth about the life of Frances Shea and her short marriage to Reggie Kray is finally revealed in this new, revised edition. With hitherto unseen photographs, documents and revelations, the book explodes the many myths surrounding the marriage. In doing so, it uncovers the sordid reality of the Kray world - and shows how the effect of this tragic, doomed relationship haunted the lives of Frances’s loved ones right to the end.

The first full account of the beautiful, innocent young woman who married Reggie Kray - and became trapped in the violent and terrifying world of the Kray Twins.

London's most notorious gangsters, in their own words . . . The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. The Kray twins were Britain's most notorious gangsters. Ruling London's underworld for more than a decade, as gang lords they were among the most powerful and feared men in the city. Photographed by David Bailey and even interviewed for television, they became celebrities in their own right and are infamous to this day. Ronnie and Reg's reign of terror ended on 8 March 1969 when they were sentenced to life with the recommendation that they serve at least thirty years. Ronnie ended his days in Broadmoor – his raging insanity only controlled by massive doses of drugs. Reg served almost three decades in some of Britain's toughest jails before being released on compassionate grounds in August 2000. He died of cancer eight months later. Compiled from a series of interviews with Fred Dinenage from behind prison walls, Our Story is the classic account that explodes the myths surrounding the Kray twins. In it, the twins set the record straight. In their own words they tell the full story of their brutal career of crime and their years behind bars. With an introduction from Fred Dinenage, this compelling, disturbing and highly readable book is the definitive story of two legendary criminals.

The classic, bestselling account of the infamous Kray twins, now a major film, LEGEND, starring Tom Hardy. Reggie and Ronald Kray ruled London's gangland during the 1960s with a ruthlessness and viciousness that shocks even now. Building an empire of organised crime such as nobody has done before or since, the brothers swindled, intimidated, terrorised, extorted and brutally murdered. John Pearson explores the strange relationship that bound the twins together, and charts their gruesome career to their downfall and imprisonment for life in 1969. Now expanded to include further extraordinary revelations, including the unusual alliance between the Kray twins and Lord Boothby – the Tory peer who won £40,000 in a libel settlement when he denied allegation of his association with the Krays – The Profession of Violence is a truly classic work. John Pearson is also the author of All the Money in the World (previously titled Painfully Rich), now a major motion picture directed by Ridley Scott film and starring Michelle Williams, Mark Wahlberg and Christopher Plummer (nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor).

40 YEARS WITH THE KRAYS is the untold, intimate history of the twins and the woman who raised them. Told with humour and insight, it looks back across the decades at the life of this close knit, notorious East End family. Maureen Flanagan, a then 20 year old hairdresser started visiting the Kray family home in Vallance Road each week to give the twins’ mother, Violet, her weekly shampoo and set. Over the cups of tea and the rollers and hairpins, Violet began to confide in ‘Flan’ about her life, her incredible pride in her twins, the celebrities who visited her at their humble East End home - and her troubled relationship with her husband.

They ruled the streets of London in the 1960s. Half a century later, Ronnie and Reggie Kray, unrepentant purveyors of violence and murder, hold more fascination than ever before. Portrayed as charismatic gangsters on the big screen, the saga of the twins, their firm and their thirty-odd years behind bars is one that is determinedly and deliberately embellished with every passing year. Yet it is only recently that the stark, unvarnished truth about the twins has started to emerge after being so cunningly concealed behind the façade of charitable deeds and East End loyalties. Bestselling author Jacky Hyams has carefully re-examined some of the stories, the lies and the myths to reveal a very different portrait of the twins and those closest to them. She reveals the complexity of their relationships and their closest bonds, and contests the police's belief that Ronnie Kray senselessly murdered 'one of their own'. Ronnie Kray is said to have described he and his twin as 'vicious, elegant bastards'. It is one of the few truths ever uttered by either of them.

Ron and Reg. Violent men who brought a code of honour to the streets that is still observed today. Their deaths bring to an end the golden era of gangsters whose word was law and whose ferocity maintained the order of the streets...Nobody knew the twins like Kate Kray. Married to Ron before his death, she was granted unique access into the shadowy world they inhabited, and was entrusted with some of the darkest secrets they possessed - secrets that could never be revealed until they were both dead. Now, with the help of thoughts and anecdotes from the people who knew the twins best, Kate has documented once and for all the life of the world's most famous gangsters, and filled in the gaps with the facts that could not be revealed until now. Gangsters, actors, East End faces - everyone who is anyone in the Firm is here, thanks to Kate's unique access and influence. And in this remarkable book, the Krays' chief torturer, the man who was with them on the night they were arrested, has broken his silence for the very first time.