Jimmy Boyle - A Sense of Freedom
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- Spookytim
Before I went away on holiday, I discovered (from Kelpie) that the Doyle family of artists from Ireland were in fact the Boyle family of artists from Scotland.
When we got to the cottage we had rented on the IOW, there were a bunch of books available to read and one of them was Jimmy Boyle's biography A Sense Of Freedom. Prompted purely by the coincidence of the name only (he's no relation to the Boyles above), I decided to read it.
I knew the name Jimmy Boyle very vaguely, buy knew little if anything of who he was and what he did.
I have to say that this is a book that I would recommend to anyone who feels they are stuck in a rut and not able to change their circumstances. When you read this you realise how much opportunity and freedom there is to change your life around.
Its an amazing account of growing up the (very very) hard way and hitting the very bottom of the well before climbing right back up to greater heights than most of us can ever hope to achieve.
If you read James Frey's A Million Tiny Pieces and was then disappointed to discover it is entirely fictional, read A Sense Of Freedom. Its the real thing.
- Spookytim0
- One day I'd like to be referred to as "Artist and murderer" in editorials.Spookytim
- You've made it:
http://www.google.ie…ian - WAHAAAAY!!!!
That proves my point (and Jimmy's) exactly... you can get it if you really want.Spookytim
- babaganush0
I saw the film. Mad as fuck. Didn't he get kneecapped and made his friends carry him to the pub the next day to show he wasn't scared...seem to remember he spent a shit load of time in solitary and ended up burrowing through walls of other cells.
Think he was on the south bank show - made a brilliant sculpture from an old tenament building
- Spookytim0
He was pretty badly mashed up and did go straight back to the pub to quell rumours that he'd been beaten out of the game (the game being gang supremacy in the Gorbals). Spent many years in a cage, in a concrete box, in a solitary cell, in a disused wing of Barlinnie Prison and he did once dig through not one but six cell walls in order to rejopin his comrades and resist the impending attack by prison warders.
He was serving god know's how many consecutive sentences the first of which was life (meaning life) during which time he was repeatedly dragged back from more sentencing for attempting to murder warders and other prisoners.
I'd offer spoliers, but I wont. That would spoil it.