James Boyle (born 17 May 1944) is a Scottish former gangster and convicted murderer who became a sculptor and novelist after his release from prison.
In 1967, Boyle was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of another gangland figure, William "Babs" Rooney. He served fourteen years before his release in 1980. [1] Boyle has always denied killing Rooney [2] but has acknowledged having been a violent and sometimes ruthless moneylender from the Gorbals, one of the roughest and most deprived areas of Glasgow. During his incarceration in the special unit of Barlinnie Prison, Riddrie, he turned to art, with the help of the special unit's art therapist, Joyce Laing. [3] [4] He wrote an autobiography, A Sense of Freedom (1977), which was later turned into a film of the same name. In 1979, whilst still a prisoner at Barlinnie, he was commissioned to produce a memorial statue of poet William McGonagall. Various difficulties associated with the project meant that the work was never completed. [5]
In 1980, while still in prison, Boyle married psychiatrist Sara Trevelyan. In 2017, Trevelyan wrote Freedom Found, [6] a book about her twenty year marriage to Boyle. In an interview after her book's publication, she stated that she had never felt unsafe with him. [7]
Upon his release from prison on 26 October 1981, he moved to Edinburgh to continue his artistic career. He designed the largest concrete sculpture in Europe called "Gulliver" for the Craigmillar Festival Society in 1976. [8] In 1983, Boyle set up the Gateway Exchange with Trevelyan and artist Evlynn Smith; a charitable organisation offering art therapy workshops to recovering drug addicts and ex-convicts. Though the project secured funding from private sources (including actor Sir Sean Connery, comedian Sir Billy Connolly and John Paul Getty) it lasted only a few years. [9]
In 1994, his son James, a drug addict, was murdered in the Oatlands neighbourhood of Glasgow. [10]
Boyle has published Pain of Confinement: Prison Diaries (1984), and a novel, Hero of the Underworld (1999). The latter was adapted for a French film, La Rage et le Rêve des Condamnés (The Anger and Dreams of the Condemned), and won the best documentary prize at the Fifa Montreal awards in 2002. He also wrote a novel, A Stolen Smile, which is about the theft of the Mona Lisa and how it ends up hidden on a Scottish housing scheme. It was rumoured that Disney bought the film rights, but Boyle has denied this. [11] [12] [13]
In 1998, he was named as a financial donor of the Labour Party. [14]
He divides his time between France and Morocco with his second wife, Kate Fenwick, a British actress. [15] [16] They married at a ceremony in Marrakech, Morocco on 27 October 2007.
The character Nicky Dryden in the 1999 film The Debt Collector is reportedly loosely based on Boyle. [17]
The punk band The Exploited released a song titled Jimmy Boyle in 1982. [18]
Riddrie is a north-eastern district of Glasgow, Scotland. It lies on the A80 Cumbernauld Road.
Ronald David Laing, usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness—in particular, psychosis and schizophrenia. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of psychopathological phenomena were influenced by his study of existential philosophy and ran counter to the chemical and electroshock methods that had become psychiatric orthodoxy. Laing took the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of personal experience rather than simply as symptoms of mental illness. Though associated in the public mind with the anti-psychiatry movement, he rejected the label. Laing regarded schizophrenia as the normal psychological adjustment to a dysfunctional social context, although later in life he revised his views.
Peter Thomas Anthony Manuel was an American-Scottish serial killer who was convicted of murdering seven people across Lanarkshire and southern Scotland between 1956 and his arrest in January 1958, and is believed to have murdered two more. Prior to his arrest, the media nicknamed the unidentified killer "the Beast of Birkenshaw". Manuel was hanged at Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison; he was the second to last prisoner to die on the Barlinnie gallows.
Francis Davidson Fraser, better known as "Mad" Frankie Fraser, was a diminutive English gangster who spent 42 years in prison for numerous violent offences.
HM Prison Barlinnie is the largest prison in Scotland. It is operated by the Scottish Prison Service and is located in the residential suburb of Riddrie, in the north east of Glasgow, Scotland. It is informally known locally as The Big Hoose, Bar and Bar-L. In 2018, plans for its closure were announced.
David Hayman is a Scottish film, television and stage actor and director. His acting credits include Sid and Nancy (1986), Hope and Glory (1987), Rob Roy (1995), The Jackal (1997), Trial & Retribution (1997-2009), Legionnaire (1998), Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000), Vertical Limit (2000), The Tailor of Panama (2001), Flood (2007), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), The Paradise (2012), Taboo (2017), Our Ladies (2019), The Nest (2020), Bull (2021), and Andor (2022).
Hugh Dunbar Brown was a British Labour Party politician. After serving as a councillor on the Glasgow Corporation, he was Member of Parliament for Glasgow Provan for 23 years. He has been described as the last "Red Clydesider".
Tom McGrath was a Scottish playwright and jazz pianist.
The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) is an independent cinema in the city centre of Glasgow. GFT is a registered charity. It occupies a purpose-built cinema building, first opened in 1939, and now protected as a category B listed building.
Paul John Ferris is a Scottish author and organised crime figure. Ferris was an enforcer for Glasgow 'Godfather' Arthur Thompson in the early 1980s. Known for his ruthlessness and extreme violence, he rose to a prominent position in the city's criminal underworld.
Donald Forbes was a Scottish convicted murderer. Forbes was convicted and jailed on three occasions, twice for murder and once for drug offences. He was at one time branded as "Scotland's most dangerous man".
Fr Ian Anthony Ross was a Scottish born Catholic priest and member of The Order of Preachers (Dominican). He was also a noted broadcaster, writer, community activist, educator and antiquarian who served as Rector of the University of Edinburgh (1979–1982).
A Sense of Freedom is a 1981 Scottish crime film directed by John Mackenzie for Scottish Television. The film stars David Hayman and featured Jake D'Arcy, Sean Scanlan, Hector Nicol, Alex Norton and Fulton Mackay. It is based on the autobiography of Glasgow gangster Jimmy Boyle, who was reputed to be Scotland's most violent man. Due to non-co-operation by the Scottish Prison Service in allowing a film crew access to their property, Hayman's scenes in prison were filmed in Dublin's Kilmainham Jail.
Francis Martin Patrick Boyle is a Scottish comedian and writer. He is known for his cynical, surreal, graphic and dark, often controversial sense of humour.
Sharon Rooney is a Scottish actress. She is known for her roles as Rae Earl in My Mad Fat Diary, Sophie in Two Doors Down, Dawn in Brief Encounters, Miss Atlantis in the 2019 remake of Dumbo and Lawyer Barbie in the 2023 film Barbie.
Your Cheatin' Heart is a BBC Scotland six-part comedy drama serial, broadcast in 1990 and written by John Byrne. It starred Tilda Swinton, John Gordon-Sinclair, Katy Murphy, Eddi Reader and Ken Stott. The format is similar to Byrne's earlier serial Tutti Frutti but the tone is much darker.
Caroline McNairn was a Scottish figurative painter.
Ken Murray was a reforming prison officer in Scotland during the last third of the twentieth century.
(Johnston) Douglas Haldane MBE, FRCPsych was a pioneering Scottish child psychiatrist, who established Great Britain's first department of Child and Family Psychiatry in 1960 in Cupar in Fife. He opened the first family in-patient treatment unit in Scotland and introduced a range of innovative therapeutic art interventions. He sat on numerous policy working parties and led a variety of professional committees. He became a founding member of the Association for Family Therapy. He was a co-founder of the Scottish Institute of Human Relations. During his time as an academic, he devoted much time to influence the development of a government policy on Marriage. In the 1960s, he was also an elder of the Church of Scotland and a member of an early Iona Community group.
Joyce Laing OBE, art therapist was a 'pioneer of art therapy'.
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