Peaky Blinders

Billy Kimber was a cunning criminal with a magnetic personality who took over the leadership of Britain's most notorious criminal gang: the Peaky Blinders, who dominated the illegal businesses of shop protection and horse race betting. Today, thanks to the hit TV series, the Peaky Blinders are synonymous with arrogance, glamor and unbridled violence. But who were the real Peaky Blinders? After decades of research, historian Carl Chinn, grandson of a member of the Peaky Blinders and son of an illegal bookmaker from Birmingham, draws on unpublished material and interviews with descendants of the gang members to offer a fascinating account of the rise and fall of the infamous mafia that sowed chaos in England at a time when the working class of the British Empire was on a war footing. These are the Peaky Blinders and this is their true story. Sunday Times bestseller

Carl Chinn has a PhD in Social History, is a Member of the Order of the British Empire, a writer, speaker and teacher. He is also the son and grandson of bookmakers from Sparkbrook (a profession he himself practiced until 1984) and, on his mother's side, a descendant of factory workers from the Aston neighborhood. His writings are deeply influenced by the working class status of his relatives and the life they led in the poor terraced neighborhoods of Birmingham, and have earned him an impressive national reputation. Chinn sincerely believes that history should be democratized because each and every person has left their mark on it and has something to tell. Peaky Blinders: The True Story is his thirty-third book