Download or read book The Guv nor written by Lenny McLean and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THIS IS THE CLASSIC BOOK THAT STARTED AN ENTIRE GENRE – THE STORY OF THE MOST ICONIC HARDMAN OF THEM ALL. Lenny McLean was one of the deadliest bareknuckle fighters Britain has ever seen. He had dear, powerful friends, but he also had terrible enemies. So much so that he had two bullet wounds in his back – each from a different attack. He was also stabbed repeatedly – always from behind. But Lenny was also a warm, big-hearted grizzly bear of a man, whose main weakness was an overwhelming desire to put the welfare of his mates ahead of his own well-being. In his extraordinary autobiography, he tells of how the mafia flew him to New York to take on their greatest bareknuckle boxer in a multi-million pound illicit bout. The Mafia’s man lasted less than three minutes. When the IRA fronted up a London gang in a money-laundering scam, Lenny was brought in to intimidate the terrorists. The IRA, not surprisingly, backed off. . . His most serious trial came when he was accused of murder. Fighting to prove his innocence against a minimum sentence of twenty-five years, Lenny never gave up – and went on to be found not guilty. This is a tale of one man’s triumph against almost insurmountable odds, in a battle that Len fought every day for himself, and to ‘put steam on the table’ for his wife and kids.

Download or read book The Guv nor and Me written by John ‘The Neck’ Houchin and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Don't cross The Neck. As the right-hand man to 'The Guv’nor' himself, Lenny McLean, John 'The Neck' Houchin is a living legend and is now telling his story for the first time. John trained daily with Lenny in the gym to achieve his huge bulk and neck, all 23 inches of it, required to frighten the hell out of troublemakers. As the enforcers for the Krays and the Richardsons, they worked together regularly over many years 'sorting out' whatever needed sorting. These are the mean streets of London back when swift justice as well as fearless loyalty were the order of the day. A new insider take from one of the most notorious characters of the time, this book is full of chippy dialogue, gangster banter, the biggest brawls, old school honour codes and pithy reflection on the changing times – from the hard men to the high life.

Download or read book The Guv nor In His Own Words Conversations with the Bare Knuckle Fighting Legend written by Peter Gerrard and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in East London in 1949, Lenny McLean grew up in an area that had been ravaged by the Second World War. Although money was scarce and fighting was commonplace, a camaraderie and deep sense of honour and respect remained. A victim of violent abuse at the hands of his stepfather, Lenny spent much of his teenage life in borstal as he began to follow a life of crime. However, it was his ability as a fighter that was to turn his life around. Lenny McLean inspired fear in many, but respect from all, as he became a bare-knuckle fighting legend. His fame became even greater in later life, appearing in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels just as his autobiography was reaching the top of the bestsellers chart. Lenny's untimely death from cancer in 1998 marked the beginning of the end of the old Cockney way of life and interest in his story has only increased since his passing, inspiring documentaries as well as a feature film, My Name is Lenny. In these unedited conversations between Lenny and his 'book man' Peter Gerrard, featuring many anecdotes that did not appear in The Guv'nor, we get to see the man behind the public image. As he looks back on his life, these transcripts reveal Lenny's humour and charm as well as the volatility that made him one of the most notorious figures ever to emerge from the East End.

Download or read book My Dad the Guvnor written by Kelly McLean and published by John Blake. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lenny McLean, better known as The Guv'nor, was a legendary and sometimes terrifying figure: a bare-knuckle fighter, bouncer and, in later life, an actor. He was a formidable force in the East End and across London, but behind his towering demeanor was a loving father who provided a safe haven for his children. For his only daughter, Kelly, his status brought with it a reputation both to live up to, and sometimes escape. Kelly experienced the old East End way of life, often lived just outside the law, first-hand and equally the uncertainty that came with her father's mood swings and the "black dog" that followed him around, despite their close bond. The connection between father and daughter became even more apparent as Kelly began to battle her own mental health issues that, as a mom to two young children, would threaten to destroy her life. In this incredibly frank and poignant memoir, Kelly McLean provides a unique insight into life growing up as the daughter of one of the last old-school fighters, featuring many previously untold stories. This is the story of East End life from a woman who has seen it, lived it, and sometimes been plagued by it.

Download or read book The Mumper written by Mark Baxter and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven drinking buddies decide to buy a racehorse and embark on the journey of a lifetime in the book that inspired the film Outside Bet. It's 1985 - Thatcher is in power, Sade is on the radio and the print workers have gone on strike. A motley rabble of seven firm friends: Thimble, Gudger, O'Sh, Fred the Shoe, Dave, Alfie and Bax meet every Sunday in their favourite South London boozer for banter of the highest order and a lot of taking the mick. Then, out of the blue, one of their number receives some news which knocks him and his merry band for six. Reeling from this shock and confused about how to deal with it, the boys meet and rally in standard fashion, in the Dutchman with a few light ales and an aim to set the world to rights. One day an unknown character approaches the crew and asks them a most intriguing question...'Does anyone here want to buy a racehorse?!' From that simple but surreal question unfolds the story of seven likely lads who embark on a unique journey in the name of their mate, and what happens when they just decide to go the whole bifta.

Download or read book The Guv nor in His Own Words written by Peter Gerrard and published by John Blake. This book was released on 2017-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A victim of violent abuse at the hands of his stepfather, Lenny spent much of his teenage life in borstal as he began to follow a life of crime. However, it was his ability as a fighter that was to turn his life around. Lenny McLean inspired fear in many, but respect from all, as he became a bare-knuckle fighting legend. His fame became even greater in later life, appearing in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels just as his autobiography was reaching the top of the bestsellers chart. Lenny's untimely death from cancer in 1998 marked the beginning of the end of the old Cockney way of life and interest in his story has only increased since his passing, inspiring documentaries as well as a feature film, My Name is Lenny. In these unedited conversations between Lenny and his "book man" Peter Gerrard, featuring many anecdotes that did not appear in The Guv'nor, we get to see the man behind the public image. As he looks back on his life, these transcripts reveal Lenny's humor and charm as well as the volatility that made him one of the most notorious figures ever to emerge from the East End.

Download or read book The Guv nor written by Anthony Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Married to the Guv nor written by Valerie McLean and published by Pan Macmillan Adult. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When his autobiography The Guv'nor was published, it turned bareknuckle champion Lenny McLean into an unlikely cult hero. His widow here takes up the pen on his behalf, to reveal more colourful incidents - Lenny's winning match against the Mafia's best boxer, and his acting career.

Download or read book My Dad The Guv nor The True Story of My Life with the Legendary Hard Man Lenny McLean written by Kelly McLean and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-12 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I am the Guv'nor's daughter - but what does that mean?' Lenny McLean, better known as The Guv'nor, was a legendary and sometimes terrifying figure: a bare-knuckle fighter, bouncer and, in later life, an actor. He was a formidable force in the East End and across London, but behind his towering demeanour was a loving father who provided a safe haven for his children. For his only daughter, Kelly, his status brought with it a reputation both to live up to, and sometimes escape. Kelly experienced the old East End way of life, often lived just outside the law, first-hand and equally the uncertainty that came with her father's mood swings and the 'black dog' that followed him around, despite their close bond. The connection between father and daughter became even more apparent as Kelly began to battle her own mental health issues that, as a mum to two young children, would threaten to destroy her life. In this incredibly frank and poignant memoir, Kelly McLean provides a unique insight into life growing up as the daughter of one of the last old-school fighters, featuring many previously untold stories. This is the story of East End life from a woman who has seen it, lived it, and sometimes been plagued by it.

Download or read book The Guv nor Revealed The Untold Story of Lenny McLean written by Anthony Thomas and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lenny McLean - an infamous name, but forever a legend. He is arguably one of the most notorious and feared prize-fighters this country has ever produced. Not only was he a mountain of a man and a true fighter, feared on the streets of gangland London and outside the clubs whose doors he manned in the heart of the capital, he was also an old-school East Ender, who took pride in operating on a gentleman's code despite the often-dangerous world he lived in. His life was cut all-too-short, just as it was taking a new, previously unimaginable direction after his role in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels but he remains loved by those who knew him. The Guv'nor Revealed uncovers parts of Lenny McLean's life not previously explored, with shared memories from his close friends, family and various other acquaintances who crossed his path one way or another during his lifetime. Lenny McLean was one of a kind; infamous for his brute strength but also loved for his protective heart. Collated from years of interviews, Lee Wortley and Anthony Thomas bring you an array of thrilling, and often touching and amusing, testimonies from those closest to him and a new insight into the life of The Guv'nor.

Download or read book The Guvnor Tapes Lenny McLean s Unpublished Stories As Told By The Man Himself written by Peter Gerrard and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2007-02-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bare-knuckle fighter by profession, Lenny McLean was one of the most notorious figures ever to emerge from the East End of London. His untimely death in 1998, following a battle against cancer, was a tragic loss for family and friends and left his legions of fans shocked and bereft. Now those fans have a unique opportunity to learn more about their hero in this sequel toThe Guv'nor. Packed with adventures, bouts, fights, and amazing stories, these conversations between Lenny andnbsp;the author revealnbsp;the parts of his life that haven't been knownnbsp;until now.

Download or read book The Guv nor Revealed written by Anthony Thomas and published by John Blake. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lenny McLean - an infamous name, but forever a legend. He is arguably one of the most notorious and feared prize-fighters England has ever produced. Not only was he a mountain of a man and a true fighter, feared on the streets of gangland London and outside the clubs whose doors he manned in the heart of the capital, he was also an old-school East Ender, who took pride in operating on a gentleman's code despite the often-dangerous world he lived in. His life was cut all-too-short, just as it was taking a new, previously unimaginable direction after his role in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels but he remains loved by those who knew him. The Guv'nor Revealed uncovers parts of Lenny McLean's life not previously explored, with shared memories from his close friends, family and various other acquaintances who crossed his path one way or another during his lifetime. Lenny McLean was one of a kind; infamous for his brute strength but also loved for his protective heart. Collated from years of interviews, Lee Wortley and Anthony Thomas bring you an array of thrilling, and often touching and amusing, testimonies from those closest to him and a new insight into the life of The Guv'nor.

Download or read book Peaky Blinders The Aftermath The real story behind the next generation of British gangsters written by Carl Chinn and published by John Blake. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Sunday Times bestselling author, Carl Chinn As Britain emerges into the mid-twentieth century, change is afoot. Cities are beginning to shift from smog-filled industrial hubs to more efficient metropolitan centres of commerce and, despite the country once again being blighted by war, society is beginning to shift towards a more modern, forward-thinking era. But change is not only limited to regular men and women; under the shifting tides of development, the criminal underbelly, too, is evolving, anxious for new avenues of exploitation and expansion . . . And so, in the third instalment of his best-selling series, historian Carl Chinn examines this new era in the landscape of Britain's gangs. After the violent reign of the Peaky Blinders, the intimidation of the Birmingham gang and frequent gang wars up and down the country, from the wreckage new groups are emerging with new ways of making money and causing trouble, and, like those who came before them, they leave havoc and destruction in their wake. Peaky Blinders: The Aftermath will bring this new generation of criminals into focus. And up and down the length of the country, from the dog tracks to the pubs of the East End, it delves into the murky world of the country's most villainous criminals.

Download or read book Nigger written by Randall Kennedy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-12-18 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Randall Kennedy takes on not just a word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with bracing courage and intelligence—with a range of reference that extends from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock routines and the O. J. Simpson trial. It’s “the nuclear bomb of racial epithets,” a word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries. Paradoxically, among many Black people it has become a term of affection and even empowerment. The word, of course, is nigger, and in this candid, lucidly argued book the distinguished legal scholar Randall Kennedy traces its origins, maps its multifarious connotations, and explores the controversies that rage around it. Should Blacks be able to use nigger in ways forbidden to others? Should the law treat it as a provocation that reduces the culpability of those who respond to it violently? Should it cost a person his job, or a book like Huckleberry Finn its place on library shelves?

Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

Download or read book Gods written by Shaw Desmond and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Guv nor Through the Eyes of Others written by Anthony Thomas and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2007-09-03 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lenny McLean – fighter, actor, hard man, legend. One of the most notorious figures ever to emerge from the East End of London, he had a reputation that was held dear by his friends and associates and feared by his enemies. His life-story is now part of modern-day history, but for the millions of people wanting to know more about the great man, here, at last, is a compilation of stories and memories from those whose lives he touched. In this fantastic book, friends, family, colleagues and adversaries have all come together to share their memories of how they knew the great man and the part he played in their lives. Although a formidable fighter and a feared enemy, these first-hand accounts tell of a man who had a big heart, who was generous and who always had time for his friends. Anthony Thomas has spent years collating these original accounts of what it meant to be a friend and associate of the Guv’nor. The famous, the infamous, family and friends all have a chance to share their memories. Affectionate, Funny and incisive, this is a book that all Lenny fans will treasure, and which no Guv’nor aficionado should be without.