Our Story

Ronnie and Reg Kray tell the story of their own criminal careers. The twins ran London's underworld as gang lords for more than a decade, and they became public figures as well as feared ones: David Bailey photographed them and television interviewed them.

The book is a first-person account, compiled while the brothers were behind prison walls. It draws on a series of interviews with Fred Dinenage, who also supplies an introduction. Ronnie and Reg use those conversations to correct the myths that grew around them and to cover their years of crime and their time in prison.

Their rule ended on 8 March 1969, when both were sentenced to life with a recommendation of at least thirty years. Ronnie spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor, where heavy doses of drugs controlled his insanity. Reg served almost three decades in some of Britain's toughest jails and was released on compassionate grounds in August 2000. He died of cancer eight months later.

The account is true crime told by the men who lived it, and it makes disturbing reading. Its voice is the twins' own, so it offers their version of events, not an outside verdict.