title: Hugh Grant

text: Grant has five children with two women. In September 2011, he had a daughter, Tabitha, with Tinglan Hong, who was sometimes misreported in the press as a receptionist at a Chinese restaurant in London. His daughter's Chinese name is Jing Xi (驚喜), meaning "happy surprise". Grant and Hong had a "fleeting affair", according to his publicist. He has said that Hong has been "badly treated" by the media; the press intrusion prevented him from attending the birth of his daughter, with Hong obtaining an injunction to allow him to visit them in peace.


title: Hugh Grant

text: In September 2012, Grant had his second child, a son, with Swedish television producer Anna Eberstein. Hong and Grant reunited briefly and she gave birth to Grant's third child, a son named Felix, in December of that same year.


title: Hugh Grant

text: In December 2015, he and Eberstein had their second child, a girl. Their third child, another girl, was born in March 2018, and they married on 25 May 2018.


title: Hugh Grant

text: In 2011, Grant appeared at the Liberal Democrats' conference on the News International phone-hacking scandal, where he briefly met then-party leader Nick Clegg. Grant said that he was attending the Conservative and Labour conferences as well, but told Lib Dem activists that "You, more than any of the other parties, have a good bill of health. You have never been in bed with these scumbags."


title: Hugh Grant

text: In the 2015 UK general election, Grant expressed support for Liberal Democrat MP Danny Alexander and later hosted a dinner for the Liberal Democrats, in which he met the winner of a draw of donors to the Liberal Democrats. In an email sent by former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, Grant wrote: "I am not a Lib Dem, a Tory, a Labourite or anything in particular but I recognise political guts." In the 2015 election, he endorsed two Labour candidates: Tom Watson and his former agent, Michael Foster.


title: Hugh Grant

text: During the 2019 UK general election Grant campaigned for tactical voting to stop a Conservative majority and Brexit. He was seen canvassing with Liberal Democrats candidates, Labour candidates, and independent Dominic Grieve.


title: Hugh Grant

text: As a young boy, he played rugby union on his school's first XV team at centre and also played football. He is a fan of Fulham and is also a supporter of Scottish football club Rangers. He continued to play in a Sunday-morning football league in south-west London after college and remains an "impassioned Fulham supporter". His other interests include tennis and snooker.


title: Hugh Grant

text: In 2011, the BBC apologised after Grant made an offhand joke about homosexuality and rugby when he was invited into the commentary box during coverage of an England v Scotland game at Twickenham Stadium. Talking about playing rugby during his school days, Grant said: "I discovered it hurt less if you tackled hard than if you tackled like a queen".


title: Hugh Grant

text: After production on "Restoration" ended, Grant's co-star, Robert Downey Jr., revealed that he and Grant did not get along during filming. Downey said: "I kinda think he's a jerk. Don't know, I just think he is. My personal experience with him is I think he's this kind of self-important, kind of, like, boring flash-in-the-pan asshole Brit." In 2018, Grant confirmed the on-set tension he and Downey had had, stating: "He [Downey] hated me. He took one look at me and wanted to kill me. I was so hurt." As a result of Grant's confirmation of their decades-long feud, Downey went to Twitter to make amends with Grant, to which Grant agreed.


title: Hugh Grant

text: In addition to the confirmation, Grant also said that he and Drew Barrymore did not get along during production of "Music & Lyrics". "Well, Drew, I think did hate me a bit. But I admired her. We just were very different human beings," Grant said. "She was very L.A. and I was an old grumpy Londoner. The funny thing is, although it was fractionally tense on the set of that film, I think the chemistry is rather good between us. Sometimes tension makes a good crackle." Barrymore had also been one out of three leading ladies Grant listed whom he did not get along with, the others being Julianne Moore and Rachel Weisz. However, on a "Graham Norton Show" appearance, Grant told Graham Norton he did not know why he mentioned Weisz and he was probably "going for a 'comedy triple'". He is also on good terms with Barrymore and appeared on "The Drew Barrymore Show".


title: Hugh Grant

text: Grant has praised many other female co-stars, including Sandra Bullock, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Emma Thompson, and Meryl Streep, who co-starred with him in "Florence Foster Jenkins" and was "a genius" according to Grant. He referred to his "Bridget Jones's Diary" co-star Renée Zellweger as "delightful." In 2020 he admitted he had always liked "The Undoing" co-star Nicole Kidman, saying she was a "silly Aussie girl."


title: Hugh Grant

text: Grant is a patron of the DIPEx Charity, which operates the website Healthtalkonline. He is also patron of the Fynvola Foundation, named after his late mother; it supports the Lady Dane Farmhouse, a home in Faversham for adults with learning disabilities.


title: Hugh Grant

text: Since his mother's death in 2001, Grant has worked as a fundraiser and ambassador for Marie Curie Cancer Care, promoting the charity's annual Great Daffodil Appeal on several occasions. He is also a patron of Pancreatic Cancer Action.


title: Alison Brie

text: Alison Brie Schermerhorn (born December 29, 1982) is an American actress. Her breakthrough came with the role of Trudy Campbell in the drama series "Mad Men" (2007–2015), which won her a Screen Actors Guild Award. She gained recognition for her role as Annie Edison in the NBC sitcom "Community" (2009–2015) and voicing Diane Nguyen in the animated comedy series "BoJack Horseman" (2014–2020). For playing Ruth Wilder in the comedy-drama series "GLOW" (2017–2019) she received nominations for two Golden Globes and two Critics' Choice Awards.


title: Alison Brie

text: In addition to her television work, Brie has also starred in films such as "Scream 4" (2011), "The Five-Year Engagement" (2012), "The Lego Movie" (2014), "Get Hard" (2015), "Sleeping with Other People" (2015), "How to Be Single" (2016), "The Little Hours" (2017), "The Disaster Artist" (2017), "The Post" (2017), "Promising Young Woman" (2020), "Horse Girl" (2020), "The Rental" (2020), and "Happiest Season" (2020).


title: Alison Brie

text: Alison Brie Schermerhorn was born on December 29, 1982, in Hollywood, California. Her father, Charles Terry Schermerhorn, is a musician and freelance entertainment reporter. Her mother, Joanne Brenner, works at "Para los Niños" ("For the Children"), a non-profit childcare agency. She has an older sister named Lauren. Brie's mother is Jewish. Her father was raised Catholic, and has Dutch, English, and Scottish ancestry. While being raised by her divorced parents, she occasionally attended a "Christian–Hindu hybrid church" called the Self-Realization Fellowship with her father. Brie graduated from South Pasadena High School in 2001. The summer between high school and college, she worked as a clown at children's birthday parties.


title: Alison Brie

text: Brie began acting onstage at the Jewish Community Center in Southern California. She graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with a bachelor's degree in theater in 2005. Her studies included a year at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.


title: Alison Brie

text: Brie's first television role came in 2006, as Nina, a novice hairdresser, on the Disney Channel sitcom "Hannah Montana". She received further recognition as Trudy Campbell in the AMC period drama series "Mad Men" (2007–2015). She went on to star in the web series "My Alibi", which aired from 2008 to 2009.


title: Alison Brie

text: From 2009 to 2015, she portrayed Annie Edison on the NBC/Yahoo! View sitcom "Community". For her performance, she earned acclaim and was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.


title: Alison Brie

text: In April 2010, Brie co-hosted an episode of "Attack of the Show!" (and again in March 2011) and appeared in a segment on "Web Soup". She appeared in the 2010 comedy film "Montana Amazon". Brie made "Maxim" magazine's 2010 Hot 100 list at number 99 and appeared at number 49 in their 2011 list. She was voted the 57th Sexiest Woman in the World by "FHM" readers in 2013. She was voted the 2nd most desirable woman in the world by AskMen readers in 2014.


title: Alison Brie

text: Brie starred in several major film roles, including as Rebecca Walters, Sidney Prescott's assistant, in the slasher horror film "Scream 4" (2011), and Suzie Barnes in the romantic comedy film "The Five-Year Engagement" (2012). She voiced Princess Unikitty in the animated comedy film "The Lego Movie" (2014), and voiced a character in an episode of the animated series "American Dad!", which aired during their eighth season.


title: Alison Brie

text: In June 2014, Brie joined the cast of the Netflix series "BoJack Horseman", which debuted on August 22. She has since voiced a variety of characters, including main character Diane Nguyen and recurring character Vincent Adultman. Brie also appeared on "Lip Sync Battle" and won against Will Arnett with performances of "Shoop" by Salt-N-Pepa and "Bang Bang" by Jessie J, Ariana Grande, and Nicki Minaj.


title: Alison Brie

text: In 2015, she starred with Jason Sudeikis in Leslye Headland's romantic comedy film "Sleeping with Other People", and played Will Ferrell's character's fiancée in the comedy film "Get Hard".


title: Alison Brie

text: In 2016, Brie starred as Lucy in the romantic comedy film "How to Be Single" and portrayed Martha Dunstable in Julian Fellowes' adaptation of Anthony Trollope's "Dr. Thorne" for television. In 2017, she co-starred in several films, including the historical comedy "The Little Hours", the biographical comedy-drama "The Disaster Artist", and the historical drama "The Post".


title: Alison Brie

text: In 2017, Brie began her starring role as Ruth Wilder in the Netflix comedy-drama series "GLOW", inspired by the 1980s female professional wrestling promotion Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling; the series began streaming on June 23, 2017. Brie noted that since appearing in "GLOW" and receiving critical praise for the role, she has become more focused on taking meaningful roles. For her performance, she earned multiple nominations for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy.


title: Alison Brie

text: In 2018, she co-starred in the music video for Beck's "Colors". In 2019, she reprised her voice role as Princess Unikitty in the animated comedy sequel film "" and provided an English dub for the Japanese animated romantic fantasy film "Weathering with You".


title: Alison Brie

text: In 2020, Brie starred in the acclaimed drama thriller film "Promising Young Woman", directed by Emerald Fennell. Also that year, she wrote, produced and starred as Sarah in the Netflix drama film "Horse Girl", which was directed by Jeff Baena. Brie then starred opposite Dan Stevens in the horror film "The Rental", which was directed by her husband Dave Franco. Brie played Sloane in the romantic comedy film "Happiest Season", directed by Clea DuVall.


title: Alison Brie

text: In 2021, Brie starred as a celebrity guest voice in the fifth season of the animated sitcom "Rick and Morty".


title: Alison Brie

text: Brie began dating Dave Franco in 2012 after meeting him at a 2011 Mardi Gras party in New Orleans. On August 25, 2015, it was reported the two were engaged. They married on March 13, 2017. In an interview with Larry King in 2017, she said that she did not want to have children.


title: Theo James

text: Theodore Peter James Kinnaird Taptiklis (born 16 December 1984) is an English actor. He is known for portraying Tobias "Four" Eaton in "The Divergent Series" film trilogy. James starred in the horror films "" (2012) and "" (2016), the action film "How It Ends" (2018), and the science fiction film "Archive" (2020). In television, he appeared in the crime drama series "Golden Boy" (2012), the romance series "The Time Traveler's Wife" (2022) and the satire series "The White Lotus" (2022).


title: Theo James

text: Theodore Peter James Kinnaird Taptiklis was born on 16 December 1984 in High Wycombe, England. He is the son of Philip Taptiklis, a business consultant, and Jane (née Martin), who worked for the National Health Service. His paternal grandfather was Greek (he moved from the Peloponnese to New Zealand). His other ancestry is English and Scottish. James is the youngest of five children, having two older brothers and two older sisters.


title: Theo James

text: James was raised in Askett, Buckinghamshire, England. He attended Aylesbury Grammar School and went on to earn his undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of Nottingham. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.


title: Theo James

text: In 2010, James made his television debut in two episodes of "A Passionate Woman", starring opposite Billie Piper. He played Turkish diplomat Kemal Pamuk in an episode of the first season of "Downton Abbey". His film credits include "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" (2010). James was cast in "Stranger" while still in his final year at drama school. He was named a "Star of Tomorrow" in 2009 by "Screen International".


title: Theo James

text: In 2011, James starred in the short-lived horror series "Bedlam", playing the lead role of Jed Harper. James played James, an obnoxious night club rep, in the British comedy "The Inbetweeners Movie" (2011).


title: Theo James

text: In 2012, James appeared in the miniseries, "Room at the Top" as Jack Wales and ITV's "Case Sensitive" as Aiden Harper. He was in the films "The Domino Effect" (2012) and "" (2012), playing the role of David in the latter opposite Kate Beckinsale. James starred as Detective Walter William Clark Jr. in the American crime-drama series "Golden Boy" (2013), which aired for one season.


title: Theo James

text: His breakthrough role was portraying the character of Tobias "Four" Eaton in "Divergent" (2014), the film adaptation based on the New York Times bestselling novels by Veronica Roth. James reprised the character in the sequel, "" (2015). He returned in one more "Divergent" film, "" (2016). He reprised his character David in , as the film's male lead.


title: Theo James

text: James starred alongside Amber Heard, Billy Bob Thornton and Jim Sturgess in the film adaptation of "London Fields", and in the indie drama "The Benefactor" (2015), with Richard Gere and Dakota Fanning. James executive produced and starred as Michael in "Backstabbing for Beginners" (2018). He starred as Will Younger in the Netflix film "How It Ends" (2018).


title: Theo James

text: In 2019, James executive produced and played Sidney Parker in the British series "Sanditon" as a male lead. It is an eight-part period-drama adaptation of Jane Austen's final novel, written only months before her death in 1817. James will not reprise his role for the series' second and third seasons. He then executive produced and starred in the film "Lying and Stealing". James launched his own film and TV production company, named Untapped, that same year.


title: Theo James

text: James produced and appeared in the 2020 British science fiction film "Archive", playing a robotics scientist working on a secret project involving building a prototype based on his dead wife. He stars in the romance series "The Time Traveler's Wife", which premiered in May 2022. "The Hollywood Reporter"s Angie Han described James's portrayal of the titular time traveler "dashing and a little sardonic" and highlighted his and co-star Rose Leslie's "inability to generate any real sparks between them". James plays a series regular role in the second season of the satire series "The White Lotus".


title: Theo James

text: James is married to Irish actress Ruth Kearney. The two met at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. They divide their time between Venice Beach, California and North London. They have a daughter born in 2021.


title: Theo James

text: Outside his acting career, James was the singer and guitarist of the London-based band Shere Khan, which disbanded in 2012. In 2015, he became the brand ambassador for Hugo Boss fragrances for men, appearing in print ads and commercials.


title: Theo James

text: In June 2016, James travelled to Greece with UNHCR, where he met Syrian refugees and learned more about their situation. He has since been a supporter of refugees' rights and called for greater humanitarian aid for people displaced by the Syrian Civil War.


title: Kray twins

text: Ronald Kray (24 October 193317 March 1995) and Reginald Kray (24 October 19331 October 2000) were identical twin brothers, gangsters and convicted criminals. They were the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in the East End of London, England, from the late 1950s to 1967. With their gang, known as the Firm, the Kray twins were involved in murder, armed robbery, arson, protection rackets, gambling, and assaults.


title: Kray twins

text: In the 1960s, as West End nightclub owners, the Kray twins mixed with politicians and prominent entertainers such as Diana Dors, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. They became celebrities themselves, were photographed by David Bailey and interviewed on television.


title: Kray twins

text: The Kray twins were arrested on 8 May 1968 and convicted in 1969 as a result of the efforts of detectives led by Detective Superintendent Leonard "Nipper" Read. Each was sentenced to life imprisonment. Ronnie was committed to Broadmoor Hospital in 1979 and remained there until his death on 17 March 1995 from a heart attack; Reggie was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2000, five weeks before he died of bladder cancer.


title: Kray twins

text: Ronald and Reginald Kray were born on 24 October 1933 in Haggerston, East London, to Charles David Kray (1907–1983), a wardrobe dealer, and Violet Annie Lee (1909–1982). The brothers were identical twins, with Reggie born 10 minutes before Ronnie. Their parents already had a six-year-old son, Charles James (1927–2000). A sister, Violet (born 1929), died in infancy. When the twins were three years old, they contracted diphtheria. The Kray household was dominated by their mother, who remained the most important influence on them during their childhood. Their father, Charles Kray Sr., was a rag-and-bone man with a fondness for heavy drinking. Kray Sr.'s work led him to live a semi-nomadic lifestyle as he travelled all over southern England looking for junk to sell, and even when he was in London, he was more often seen at the pubs than at home with his family. The Kray twins first attended Wood Close School in Brick Lane, and then Daniel Street School. In 1938 the family moved from Stean Street in Haggerston to 178 Vallance Road in Bethnal Green.


title: Kray twins

text: Violet Kray was regarded as a minor celebrity in Bethnal Green for giving birth to and raising a healthy pair of twins at a time when the infant and childhood mortality rate was high amongst the British working class. In the interwar period, it was normal that one of the twins born into working class families would die before adulthood, and it was most unusual that both the Kray twins survived, making Violet Kray the object of much admiration in Bethnal Green, which caused her to have an inflated ego. There was a feeling within Bethnal Green that there was an almost unnatural emotional closeness between the two twins and their mother, who shunned the company of others. Ronnie later stated about his childhood: "We had our mother, and we had each other, so we never needed no one else". One of the Krays' cousins who attended school with them, Billy Wilshire, recalled: "It's hard to say exactly what it was, but they weren't like other children". The biographer of the Krays, John Pearson, argued that Violet Kray planted the seeds of the malignant narcissism that the twins would display as adults by encouraging her sons to think of themselves as being extraordinary while spoiling their every whim.


title: Kray twins

text: In World War Two, Kray Sr. was a deserter from the British Army, having been conscripted in September 1939, and deserting shortly afterwards as he found the life of a soldier uncongenial. Kray Sr. spend the next 15 years living as a fugitive, being finally arrested in 1954 on charges of desertion, and during this period as a wanted man, he was only irregularly involved in raising his family. During the Second World War, the twins were evacuated to East House in Hadleigh, Suffolk, with their mother Violet and their older brother Charles. They stayed at East House with the owners Dr and Mrs Style for about one year before moving back to London, as Violet missed her friends and family. While they were in Hadleigh, the twins attended Bridge Street Boys' School. When the twins were interviewed in 1989 while at Broadmoor Hospital, Ronnie described Hadleigh as their first time in the countryside. What appealed to the twins was the "quietness, the peacefulness of it, the fresh air, nice scenery, nice countryside – different from London. We used to go to a big 'ill called Constitution Hill and used to go sledging there in the winter-time."


title: Kray twins

text: The influence of their maternal grandfather, Jimmy "Cannonball" Lee, caused the brothers to take up amateur boxing, then a popular pastime for working-class boys in the East End. Sibling rivalry spurred them on, and both achieved some success. Ronnie was considered to be the more aggressive of the two twins, constantly getting into street fights as a teenager. The British scholar Jonathan Raban wrote that Ronnie had a "low IQ", but that he was an avid reader who especially liked books about T.E. Lawrence, Orde Wingate, Al Capone and the Chicago underworld in the "Roaring Twenties". Raban attributed much of Ronnie's "savage petulance" as a teenager due to his rage over having to hide his bisexual tendencies.


title: Kray twins

text: The Krays were called up to do National Service in the British Army in March 1952. Although the pair reported to the depot of the Royal Fusiliers at the Tower of London, they attempted to leave after only a few minutes. When the corporal in charge tried to stop them, he was seriously injured by Ronnie when he punched him on the jaw. The Krays walked back to their East End home. They were arrested the next morning by the police and turned over to the army.


title: Kray twins

text: In September while absent without leave (AWOL) again, the twins assaulted a police constable who tried to arrest them. They became among the last prisoners to be held at the Tower of London before being transferred to Shepton Mallet military prison in Somerset for a month to await court-martial. After they were convicted, both were sent to the Buffs' Home Counties Brigade Depot jail in Canterbury, Kent. However, when it became clear they were both to be dishonourably discharged from the army, the Krays' behaviour became worse. They dominated the exercise areas outside their one-man cells, threw tantrums, emptied a latrine bucket over a sergeant, dumped a canteen full of hot tea on another guard, handcuffed a guard to their prison bars with a pair of stolen cuffs and set their bedding on fire. Eventually they were moved to a communal cell where they assaulted their guard with a vase and escaped. After being quickly recaptured, they spent their last night in military custody in Canterbury drinking cider, eating crisps and smoking cigarillos courtesy of the young national servicemen acting as their guards. The next day the Krays were transferred to a civilian prison to serve sentences for the crimes they committed while AWOL. Raban wrote that prison psychiatrists who examined Ronnie found him to be: "educationally subnormal, psychopathic, schizophrenic and insane". Despite a less than stellar military career, the Krays adopted an extremely militaristic style as Ronnie took to calling himself "the Colonel" while their home at 178 Vallance Road was dubbed "Fort Vallance"..


title: Kray twins

text: The Krays' criminal records and dishonourable discharges from the Royal Fusiliers ended their boxing careers, and the brothers turned to crime full-time. They bought a run-down snooker club in Mile End where they started several protection rackets. By the end of the 1950s, the Krays were working for Jay Murray from Liverpool and were involved in hijacking, armed robbery, and arson, through which they acquired other clubs and properties. In 1960, Ronnie was imprisoned for 18 months for running a protection racket. While he was in prison, Peter Rachman, head of a landlord operation, sold Reggie a nightclub called Esmeralda's Barn to ward off threats of further extortion. The location is where the Berkeley Hotel now stands.


title: Kray twins

text: Ownership of Esmeralda's Barn increased the Krays' influence in the West End by making them celebrities as well as criminals. The twins adopted a norm according to which anyone who failed to show due respect would be severely punished. Both Ronnie and Reggie notoriously laundered money through dog and horse tracks as well as through businesses, which led to several others being investigated during the mid-1960s for their co-operation with the crimes. They were assisted by a banker named Alan Cooper who wanted protection against the Krays' rivals, the Richardson Gang, based in South London. Raban called Ronnie the "dimmer" of the two twins, writing that he was "...a man whose grasp on reality was so slight and pathologically deranged that he was able to live out a crude, primarily colored fiction, twisting the city into the shape of a bad thriller". Ronnie quite consciously modelled the style of "the Firm" after what he read about the Chicago underworld, for an example having his own personal barber visit his flat to work on his hair because he read somewhere that was the normal practice with Chicago gangsters in the 1920s.


title: Kray twins

text: In the 1960s, the Kray twins were widely seen as prosperous and charming celebrity nightclub owners and were part of the Swinging London scene. A large part of their fame was due to their non-criminal activities as popular figures on the celebrity circuit, being photographed by David Bailey on more than one occasion and socialising with lords, MPs, socialites and show business characters, including Frank Sinatra, Peter Sellers, Joan Collins, Judy Garland, Diana Dors, George Raft, Sammy Davis Jr., Shirley Bassey, Liza Minnelli, Cliff Richard, Dusty Springfield, Jayne Mansfield, Richard Harris, Danny La Rue and Barbara Windsor.


title: Kray twins

text: They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world... and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable...


title: Kray twins

text: Part of the Krays celebrity status in the 1960s was due to the widespread perception that the twins were men who had risen out of poverty into positions of great wealth and power due to their own efforts. The Krays were seen as an example, albeit a perverse one, of the "meritocracy" that was to replace the traditional class system. Furthermore, the 1960s were a time when many traditional British values were being questioned, and the Kray twins were widely seen as "rebels" against what were perceived as sanctimonious and hypocritical traditional British values. The scholars Chris Jenks and Justin Lorentzen wrote that there was "a popular mistrust of the Establishment" in the 1960s and that as many young people "laughed Prime Minister Macmillan and President Johnson, their teachers and university lecturers and priests and moralists off the stage", the Krays were seen as folk heroes. The "Swinging Sixties" era was a time of intense debates arising about consumerism, social mobility, sexuality, style, and social tolerance, and the Krays were involved in all of them as symbols, either bad or good, about the changes taking place in British society.


title: Kray twins

text: The Krays greatly valued their image and cultivated the media by inviting journalists to take photographs of them with other celebrities at nightclubs or in donating to charity. The Krays went about in an obsessive way managing and promoting their image that they wanted, namely as society's benefactors who gave generously to charity and as men who had risen up from poverty to become rich and powerful. The sociologist Dick Hebdige wrote that the Krays had: "...a sophisticated awareness of the importance of public relations matched only in the image-conscious field of American politics...As we have seen, certain of the Krays projects, when closely examined, take on a bizarre aspect more appropriate to the theater than to the rational pursuit of profit by crime". In 1960, gambling in clubs was legalised in the United Kingdom, which for the first time allowed 'decent' people to be openly seen gambling outside of the horserace tracks. The Krays were the owners of four nightclubs where gambling was allowed, which not only allowed them to be seen as successful businessmen, but also to socialise with the 'decent' people who would had previously shunned at least in public the company of gangsters running a "gambling den".


title: Kray twins

text: The Krays made a point of promoting a "gangster chic" image as both dressed in a style that countless films had associated with gangsters, namely wearing "discreet, dark, double-breasted suits with tight-knotted ties and shoulder-padded overcoats. Combined with garish jewellery such as large gold rings, gold bracelet watches, and diamond cuff links, the Krays conveyed a redoubtable image". The British scholar Ruth Penfold-Mounce described the Krays as a classic example of the social bandit, criminals who became folk heroes because of the belief that they were standing up to a corrupt Establishment while also paradoxically being seen as upholding the better part of society's values. The Krays were viewed in certain quarters as "Robin Hood" type criminals whose crimes were seen as acceptable. Penfold-Mounce noted they combined an air of menace and violence together with an image of "a romanticised air of heroic gentlemanliness, generosity, and the apparent reinforcement of traditional social order parameters of conservatism and restraint". Within this context, the Krays made a point of stressing that there were limits to the values that they were willing to violate while promoting the image of themselves as the benefactors of society. For an example, the Krays made a great point of stressing the image of being respectful towards women as they knew that the British public did not like men who were disrespectful towards women. One former member of "the Firm", Tony Lamrianou stated that the positive image of the Krays was a "myth" as he maintained the only people the brothers ever cared about were themselves.


title: Kray twins

text: Jenks and Loretzen noted the image of the Krays had little to do with whom the brothers actually were as they described the Krays as considerably more vicious and selfish than the popular "folk hero" image of them would allow. Admirers of the brothers stress their supposed "Robin Hood" characteristics with the brothers alleged to have given away much of their ill-gotten wealth to the deserving poor of the East End; their respect for women; and as a force for order who only engaged what were considered socially acceptable crimes such as theft while punishing those who engaged in what were considered socially unacceptable crimes such as rape. The East End at the time had its own informal rules such as a deep distrust of the Scotland Yard as exemplified by the popular saying "thou shall not grass", which led to the police complaining of a "wall of silence". Within the East End, where "roguery" was widely admired, Jenks and Lorentzen noted "...symbolic heroes are elected through excess. The most audacious thefts, the most sadistic violence and an almost philosophical quest for glory in infamy are topmost in people's minds. An elision of style and brutality can emerge, as it did in the form of the Krays".


title: Kray twins

text: Conversely, the Kray twins were seen in other quarters as symbols of moral decay and evil, with the famous photographs of the two brothers taken by David Bailey being viewed as "the phrenological archetypes of proletarian villainy". Jenks and Lorentzen wrote the Krays became symbols in the public mind of British organised crime itself as the Krays were associated with "tales of excessive and gratuitous violence and to a time when London criminality appeared not only as organised as never before, but also integrated into the Establishment and the vanguard of popular culture". Jenks and Lorentzen further maintained that the Krays' close association with the East End of London, an area viewed as a centre of "social disorganisation and moral decay" further contributed to the negative picture of the brothers. At least some critics of the Krays made xenophobic arguments that the Krays were not of English stock, but were instead the products of a mixture of Ashkenazi Jewish and Romany descent, which was presented as typical of the East End, which was viewed in certain quarters as a "frontier", an impoverished and lawless area that attracted many immigrants. There is no evidence of the supposed Jewish/Romany origins of the Krays, a claim that seems to have been made only to associate the Krays with their supposed familial homelands in Eastern Europe and to distance them from English society. Finally, Jenks and Lorentzen argued that the rareness of identical twins made the brothers seem especially malevolent, giving them the "freak show" image as many found viewing two men who looked and sounded precisely the same to be disturbing and unnerving.


title: Kray twins

text: The closeness of the Krays made them seem sinister as Lamrianou recalled in 1995: "You were never, ever on solid ground with them...They played a little game of their own. There was an unspoken language; it was what they didn't say as much as what they did say. There's a myth that the Krays took care of their own, but I never saw it. The Krays were their own". Alongside this "freak show" image were suggestions of what was viewed at the time as perverted sexuality. At a time when homosexuality was widely considered abnormal – especially in the underworld of the East End – Ronnie made a point of flaunting his homosexual relationships, which was considered to be quite shocking in the 1950s–1960s. Reggie was ostensibly heterosexual, but there were rumours that he had boyfriends as a teenager. Alongside these rumors were the facts that he had only one known relationship with a woman, was only briefly married, and his marriage was apparently never consummated, which all led to a widespread belief that he was also gay. The Krays were not asexual, but the indeterminate nature of their sexuality contributed to their popular image of being in some vague way very perverse. The fact that the Krays were successful gangsters while not subscribing to the standard heteronormative "hard men" or "lovable rogue" stereotypes associated with British gangsters while also rejecting the popular effeminate stereotype of gay men led to a sense there was something unnatural about the Krays. The "sordid facts" that were presented during the Krays' trial for murder in 1968–1969 led to their "folk hero" image being eclipsed by a "folk villain" image.


title: Kray twins

text: The Labour MP, Tom Driberg, who also served as the gossip columnist for "The Daily Express" newspaper knew the Conservative peer Lord Boothby very well through the dinner parties hosted by Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor of "The Daily Express". Through his friend, the theatre director Joan Littlewood, Driberg had met Reggie. Through their mutual friendship, he introduced Ronnie to Boothby. Ronnie was a sexual sadist while Boothby was a masochist who enjoyed the way that he was dominated by Ronnie. Boothby loved the limelight, and he used the fame that he had garnered from being Churchill's parliamentary secretary to often appeared on television talks shows in the 1950s-1960s as the designated spokesman for the Conservative Party on the issues of the day. Boothby's career had been marred by scandal as his cousin, Simon Carey, noted: "Bob found it very, very difficult to tell the truth". However, this aspect of his life was unknown to the general public, who knew Boothby as a celebrity peer who was constantly on the talk shows. Boothby's status as the unofficial Tory television champion would make any scandal involving him especially damaging to the Conservative Party. For the purposes of blackmail and the sense of power that came from associating with powerful men, Ronnie hosted parties for Boothby and other upper-class gay men where attractive working class "rent boys" were made available for sex.


title: Kray twins

text: In July 1964, an exposé in the tabloid newspaper "Sunday Mirror" insinuated that Ronnie had begun a homosexual relationship with Lord Boothby, a Conservative politician, at a time when sex between men was still a criminal offence in the UK. Scotland Yard had leaked to the "Sunday Mirror" several photographs featuring Ronnie and Boothby posing together along with photographs of them with Boothby's chauffer Leslie Holt and Teddy Smith, a member of "the Firm" who was also the lover of Driberg. The photographs were not printed, but alluded to in the "Sunday Mirror"'s headline "The Pictures We Must Not Print" along with the subtitle "Peer and Gangster: Yard Inquiry". Although no names were printed in the piece, the twins threatened the journalists involved and Boothby threatened to sue the newspaper with the help of Labour Party leader Harold Wilson's solicitor, Arnold Goodman. In the face of this, the "Sunday Mirror" backed down, sacking its editor, printing an apology and paying Boothby £40,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Because of this, other newspapers were unwilling to expose the Krays' connections and criminal activities. Decades later, Channel 4 established the truth of the allegations and released a documentary on the subject called "The Gangster and the Pervert Peer" (2009).


title: Kray twins

text: Boothby called the £40,000 pounds (close to a million pounds in 2010 values) he was awarded from "The Sunday Mirror" "tainted money", and though he professed to have donated the majority of the money to charity, it appears the Krays took the bulk of the £40,000 pounds. One of Boothby's first actions after being awarded the libel suit was to write a cheque for £5,000 pounds to Ronnie. Ronnie had also launched a libel action of his own against "The Sunday Mirror" columnist Cecil King for calling him a "homosexual thug" in one of his columns, but the judge dismissed the suit under the grounds that it was a "fair comment". Ronnie was furious about the dismissal, raging to a group of journalists: "Proves what I always said. One law for the fucking rich and another for the poor".


title: Kray twins

text: Police investigated the Krays on several occasions, but the brothers' reputation for violence made witnesses afraid to testify. There was also a problem for both main political parties. The Conservative Party was unwilling to press the police to end the Krays' power for fear that the Boothby connection would again be publicised, and the Labour Party, in power from October 1964 but with an extremely thin majority in the House of Commons and the prospect of another general election needing to be called in the very near future, did not want connections between Ronnie and Tom Driberg, a relatively openly gay Labour MP, to get into the public realm.


title: Kray twins

text: The Kray brothers formed an alliance with "the Commission" of New York that was the governing board of the American Mafia, being in contact with Meyer Lansky and Angelo Bruno, who were looking to invest in London's gambling clubs and nightclubs. The Mafia favoured nightclubs and casinos for money laundering, and greatly preferred nightclubs and casinos abroad as a way to avoid hostile audits by the American authorities. The nightclubs and casinos of Havana had long served that purpose, but after the Communist revolution of 1959 led to their closure, the Mafia had been looking for a replacement, leading to interest in London's nightclubs. The belief that the Krays were able to blackmail elite figures such as Boothby and in this way influence the British government made them attractive London business partners for the Mafia. Both Lansky and Bruno were considered to be diplomatic figures by the standards of American organised crime, and were felt to be the best ones to negotiate with the mercurial and irascible Krays.


title: Kray twins

text: The conduit between Lansky and the Krays was a faded Hollywood star living in London, the actor George Raft, whom the Krays idolised for his performance as the ice-cold Mafia hitman Guino Rinaldo in the 1932 film "Scarface". The Mob-linked Raft had been a major Hollywood star in the 1930s-1940s, but his career had been in decline all through the 1950s. In 1965 with Raft's Hollywood career essentially over, he moved to London with the hope that might find roles in European films. Lansky had opened the Colony Sports Club in London and installed Raft as the nominal owner, partly to avoid the attention of the British authorities and partly to gain the attention of gamblers, who might be attracted by the lingering stardom of Raft. The Colony Sports Club was marketed not so much at British gamblers, but rather at older, wealthy American tourists in London. The Krays were hired to provide "protection" at the Colony Sports Club, being paid £500 pounds per week to provide thugs from "the Firm" to act as security at the Colony Sports Club. Ronnie in particular had a fixation with the Mafia and was overjoyed to meet Mafiosi such as Dino Cellini and Angelo Bruno.


title: Kray twins

text: In 1964, Ronnie flew out to New York to meet Lansky and Bruno, but the meeting was aborted when U.S. Customs refused him admission under the grounds that he had a criminal record. In 1965, a branch of the Royal Bank of Canada was robbed in Montreal, and the thieves stole bearer bonds worth $50,000 Canadian dollars. Altogether, about $1 million in Canadian bearer bonds had been stolen in various robberies in Montreal. In the 1960s-1970s, Montreal was known as the "bank robbery capital of North America" as the city had more bank robberies than any other North American city. The Montreal underworld is very closely linked to the New York underworld, and as such "the Commission" took an interest in the bonds. The Cotroni family, which was the dominant criminal syndicate in Montreal in the 1960s was merely the Canadian branch of the Bonanno family of New York, which was one of the "Five Families" whose leaders made up "the Commission". As the police in both Canada and the United States were on the look-out for the stolen bearer bonds, it was decided to sell them in Britain and the task was entrusted to the Krays. The Krays sent over a corrupt businessman, Leslie "the Brain" Payne, to Montreal to pick up the stolen bonds to sell them in the United Kingdom. Payne was able to cash the stolen bonds at a London broking house via a friend who proved all too willing not to ask questions about their precise provenance, netting a handsome profit for "the Firm". The success of the stolen bearer bonds deal made the Krays into the preferred British partners of the American Mafia, who used the Krays a number of times afterwards in similar arrangements.


title: Kray twins

text: The business of redeeming the stolen bearer bonds in London ultimately led to a break between Payne and the Krays. Payne charged that since he was the one taking all the risks as he flew out to Montreal to pick up the bonds, smuggled them into London and had them redeemed via his corrupt friends in the City that he was entitled to a larger share of the profits. The Krays refused Payne's demand, which caused him to leave "the Firm" out of disgust with their greed. Payne did not contact the authorities, but the mere possibility that Payne might one day turn Crown's evidence and testify against the Krays led them to plot his murder. The Second World War veteran Payne who had fought in the Battles of Monte Cassino in 1944 ridiculed the threats of the Krays as he maintained that he had seen far worse at Monte Cassino, which made the Krays wanted to have him killed even more. The Krays lacked the necessary connections with the City to keep redeeming the stolen bonds on their own and the replacement for Payne was Alan Bruce Cooper, a disreputable American businessman living in London who appeared to be a fantasist as he often made outlandish claims about himself.


title: Kray twins

text: Ronnie shot and killed George Cornell, a member of the Richardson Gang, at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel on 9 March 1966. The day before, there had been a shoot-out at Mr Smith's, a nightclub in Catford, involving the Richardsons and Richard Hart, an associate of the Krays, who was shot dead. This public shoot-out led to the arrest of nearly all the Richardson Gang. Cornell, by chance, was not present at the club during the shooting and was not arrested.


title: Kray twins

text: Ronnie was drinking in another pub when he learned of Cornell's whereabouts. He went to the Blind Beggar with his driver, "Scotch Jack" John Dickson, and his assistant Ian Barrie. Ronnie went into the pub with Barrie, walked straight to Cornell and shot him in the head in public view. Barrie, confused by what happened, fired five shots in the air warning onlookers not to report what had happened to the police. Just before he was shot, Cornell remarked, "Well, look who's here." He died at 3:30a.m. in hospital. Ronnie was already suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time of the killing.


title: Kray twins

text: According to some sources, Ronnie killed Cornell because he referred to him as a "fat poof" (a derogatory term for gay men) during a confrontation between the Krays and the Richardsons at the Astor Club on Christmas Day 1965. Richardson member Frankie Fraser was tried for the murder of Hart at Mr. Smith's, but was found not guilty. Richardson member Ray "the Belgian" Cullinane testified that he saw Cornell kicking Hart. Witnesses would not co-operate with the police in the murder case due to intimidation and the trial ended inconclusively without pointing to any suspect in particular. In his 1988 memoir, Ronnie wrote: "I felt fucking marvelous. I have never felt so good, so bloody alive, before or since. Twenty years on and I can recall every second of the killing of George Cornell. I have replayed it in my mind millions of times".


title: Kray twins

text: The Krays' Mafia allies were unhappy about the Cornell murder, feeling that it was reckless on the part of Ronnie to commit a murder in public, instead of assigning the task to some junior associate. Reggie was able with the help of Raft to maintain the alliance, arguing "the Firm" was still the best business partners of the Mafia in London. Raft and Reggie used the fact that none of the witnesses at the Blind Beggar were willing to testify against Ronnie as evidence of the degree of fear that the Krays inspired. Shortly afterwards, Raft was prevented from returning to Britain following a trip back to the United States by a Home Office order as an "undesirable", thereby costing the Krays their strongest ally within the Mafia.


title: Kray twins

text: On 12 December 1966, the Krays helped Frank Mitchell, "the Mad Axeman", to escape from Dartmoor Prison. Ronnie had befriended Mitchell while they served time together in Wandsworth Prison. Mitchell felt that the authorities should review his case for parole, so Ronnie thought that he would be doing him a favour by getting him out of Dartmoor, highlighting his case in the media and forcing the authorities to act. Once Mitchell had escaped, the Krays held him at a friend's flat in Barking Road, East Ham. He was a large man with a mental disorder, and he was difficult to control. He disappeared, but the Krays were acquitted of his murder. Freddie Foreman, a friend of the Krays, claimed in his autobiography "Respect" that he shot Mitchell dead as a favour to the twins and disposed of his body at sea.


title: Kray twins

text: In October 1967, four months after the suicide of his wife Frances, Reggie was allegedly encouraged by his brother to kill Jack "the Hat" McVitie, a minor member of the Kray gang who had failed to fulfil a £1,000 contract, £500 of which had been paid to him in advance, to kill their former financial adviser, Leslie Payne. McVitie was lured to a basement flat in Evering Road, Stoke Newington, on the pretence of a party. Upon entering the premises, he saw Ronnie seated in the front room. Ronnie approached, letting loose a barrage of verbal abuse and cutting McVitie below his eye with a piece of broken glass. It is believed that an argument then broke out between the twins and McVitie. As the argument got more heated, Reggie pointed a handgun at McVitie's head and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun failed to discharge.


title: Kray twins

text: McVitie was then held in a bear hug by the twins' cousin, Ronnie Hart, and Reggie was handed a carving knife. He then stabbed McVitie in the face and stomach, driving the blade into his neck while twisting the knife, not stopping even as McVitie lay on the floor dying. Reggie had committed a very public murder, against someone who many members of the Firm felt did not deserve to die. In an interview in 2000, shortly after Reggie's death, Freddie Foreman revealed that McVitie had a reputation for leaving carnage behind him due to his habitual consumption of drugs and heavy drinking, and his having threatened to harm the twins and their family.


title: Kray twins

text: Tony and Chris Lambrianou and Ronnie Bender helped clear up the evidence of this crime, and attempted to assist in the disposal of the body. With McVitie's corpse being too big to fit in the boot of the car, it was wrapped in an eiderdown and put in the back seat. Tony Lambrianou drove the car with the body and Chris Lambrianou and Bender followed behind. Crossing the Blackwall tunnel, Chris lost Tony's car and spent up to 15 minutes looking around Rotherhithe area. They found Tony, outside St Mary's Church, where he had run out of fuel, McVitie's body still inside the car. The body was left in the car and the three gangsters returned home. Bender then went on to phone Charlie Kray informing them that it had been dealt with. When the Krays heard where they had left McVitie's corpse, the twins were livid and desperately phoned Foreman, who was then running a pub in Southwark, to see if he could dispose of the body. With dawn breaking, Foreman found the car, broke into it and drove the body to Newhaven where, with the help of a trawlerman, the body was bound with chicken wire and dumped in the English Channel. This event started turning many people against the Krays, and some were prepared to testify to Scotland Yard as to what had happened, fearing that what happened to McVitie could easily happen to them.


title: Kray twins

text: Detective Chief Superintendent Leonard "Nipper" Read of Scotland Yard was promoted to the Murder Squad and his first assignment was to bring down the Kray twins. During the first half of 1964, Read had been investigating their activities but publicity and official denials of Ron's relationship with Boothby made the evidence that he collected useless. Read went after the twins again in 1967 but frequently came up against the East End "wall of silence" which discouraged anyone from providing information to the police. They were represented in court by Nemone Lethbridge.


title: Kray twins

text: By the end of 1967, Read had built up enough evidence against the Krays. Early in 1968, the Krays employed Alan Bruce Cooper who sent Paul Elvey to Glasgow to buy explosives for a car bomb. Elvey was a radio engineer who put Radio Sutch on the air in 1964, later renamed Radio City. After police detained him in Scotland, he confessed to being involved in three murder attempts. The evidence was weakened by Cooper, who claimed that he was an agent for the US Treasury Department investigating links between the American Mafia and the Kray gang. The attempted murders were his attempt to put the blame on the Krays.


title: Kray twins

text: Eventually, Scotland Yard decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence already collected, in the hope that other witnesses would be forthcoming once the Krays were in custody. On 8 May 1968, the Krays and 15 other members of the Firm were arrested. Exceptional measures were used to stop collusion between the accused. Nipper Read then secretly interviewed each of the arrested and offered each member of the Firm a deal if they testified against the others. Donoghue told the twins directly that he was not prepared to be cajoled into pleading guilty, to the anger of the twins. He then informed Read via his mother that he was ready to cooperate.


title: Kray twins

text: Ronnie Hart had initially not been arrested, and was not a name initially sought after by the police. With Donoghue's testimony, Hart was arrested. Offered the same terms as the others, Hart then told Read everything that had happened during McVitie's murder, although he did not know anything about what happened to the body. Although Read knew for certain that Ronnie Kray had murdered George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub no one had been prepared to testify against the twins out of fear. Upon finding out the twins intended to cajole him, 'Scotch Jack' Dickson also turned in everything he knew about Cornell's murder. Although not a witness to the murder he was an accessory, having driven Ronnie Kray and Ian Barrie to the pub. The police still needed a witness to the murder. Frank Mitchell's escape and disappearance were much harder to obtain evidence for, since the majority of those arrested were not involved with his planned escape and disappearance.


title: Kray twins

text: The twins' defence under their counsel John Platts-Mills, QC, consisted of flat denials of all charges and discrediting witnesses by pointing out their criminal past. Justice Melford Stevenson said "In my view, society has earned a rest from your activities". The trial, which lasted from January to March 1969, was a media sensation. Such was the demand to attend the trial in the public gallery section of the courthouse that a black market emerged for seats with the price being £5 pounds per day for a seat in the public gallery. It was the longest murder hearing in the history of British criminal justice, during which Justice Melford Stevenson stated of the sentences "I recommend [they] should not be less than thirty years". In March 1969, both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of Cornell and McVitie. Their brother Charlie was imprisoned for ten years for his part in the murders.


title: Kray twins

text: Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed, under a large police guard, to attend the funeral service of their mother Violet on 11 August 1982, following her death from cancer a week earlier. They were not allowed to attend her burial in the Kray family plot at Chingford Mount Cemetery. The funeral was attended by celebrities including Diana Dors and underworld figures known to the Krays. To avoid the publicity that had surrounded their mother's funeral, the twins did not ask for permission to attend their father's funeral in March 1983.


title: Kray twins

text: Ronnie Kray was a Category A prisoner, denied almost all liberties and not allowed to mix with other prisoners. He was eventually certified insane, his paranoid schizophrenia being tempered with constant medication; in 1979 he was committed and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire. Reggie Kray, constantly being refused parole, was locked up in Maidstone Prison for eight years (Category B). In 1997, he was transferred to the Category C Wayland Prison in Norfolk.


title: Kray twins

text: In 1985, officials at Broadmoor Hospital discovered a business card of Ronnie's that led to evidence that the twins, from separate institutions, were operating Krayleigh Enterprises (a "lucrative bodyguard and 'protection' business for Hollywood stars") together with their older brother Charlie Kray and an accomplice at large. Among their clients was Frank Sinatra, who hired 18 bodyguards from Krayleigh Enterprises on his visit to the 1985 Wimbledon Championships. Documents released under Freedom of Information laws revealed that although officials were concerned about this operation, they believed that there was no legal basis to shut it down.


title: Kray twins

text: In his book "My Story" and a comment to writer Robin McGibbon on "The Kray Tapes", Ronnie stated: "I'm bisexual, not homosexual. Bisexual." In the 1960s, he also planned to marry a woman named Monica whom he had dated for nearly three years. He called her "the most beautiful woman he had ever seen." This is mentioned in Reggie's book "Born Fighter". Also, extracts are mentioned in Ron's own book "My Story" and in Kate Kray's books "Sorted"; "Murder, Madness and Marriage", and "Free at Last".


title: Kray twins

text: Ronnie was arrested before he had the chance to marry Monica, and although she married his ex-boyfriend, 59 letters sent to her between May and December 1968 when he was imprisoned show Ronnie still had feelings for her, and his love for her was very clear. He referred to her as "my little angel" and "my little doll". She also still had feelings for Ronnie. These letters were auctioned in 2010.


title: Kray twins

text: A letter Ronnie sent to his mother Violet from prison in 1968 also refers to Monica: "if they let me see Monica and put me with Reg, I could not ask for more." He went on to say, "Monica is the only girl I have liked in my life. She is a lovely little person as you know. When you see her, tell her I am in love with her more than ever." Ronnie subsequently married twice, marrying Elaine Mildener in 1985 at Broadmoor chapel before the couple divorced in 1989, following which he married Kate Howard, whom he divorced in 1994. Kate Howard lived for a number of years in Headcorn Kent, in Forge Lane.


title: Kray twins

text: In an interview with author John Pearson, Ronnie indicated he identified with the 19th-century soldier Charles George Gordon: "Gordon was like me, homosexual, and he met his death like a man. When it's time for me to go, I hope I do the same."


title: Kray twins

text: In his biography of the twins, "The Profession of Violence", Pearson claims that Ronnie Kray admitted that he and Reggie discovered they were both gay in their adolescence and would often have sex together, an activity which continued into their later life.


title: Kray twins

text: Reggie married Frances Shea in 1965; she committed suicide two years later. In 1997 Reggie married Roberta Jones, whom he met while still in prison. She was helping to publicise a film she was making about Ronnie, who had died in hospital two years earlier.


title: Kray twins

text: There was a long-running campaign, with some minor celebrity support, to have the twins released from prison, but successive Home Secretaries vetoed the idea, largely on the grounds that both Krays' prison records were marred by violence toward other inmates. The campaign gathered momentum after the release of a film based on their lives called "The Krays" (1990). Produced by Ray Burdis, it starred Spandau Ballet brothers Martin and Gary Kemp, who played the roles of Reggie and Ronnie respectively. Ronnie, Reggie and Charlie Kray received £255,000 for the film.


title: Kray twins

text: Reggie wrote: "I seem to have walked a double path most of my life. Perhaps an extra step in one of those directions might have seen me celebrated rather than notorious." Others point to Reggie's violent prison record when he was being detained separately from Ronnie and argue that in reality, the twins' temperaments were little different.


title: Kray twins

text: Reggie's marriage to Frances Shea (1943–1967) in 1965 lasted eight months when she left, although the marriage was never formally dissolved. An inquest came to the conclusion that she had committed suicide, but in 2002 an ex-lover of Reggie Kray's came forward to allege that Frances was murdered by a jealous Ronnie. Bradley Allardyce spent three years in Maidstone Prison with Reggie and explained, "I was sitting in my cell with Reg and it was one of those nights where we turned the lights down low and put some nice music on and sometimes he would reminisce. He would get really deep and open up to me. He suddenly broke down and said 'I'm going to tell you something I've only ever told two people and something I've carried around with me' – something that had been a black hole since the day he found out. He put his head on my shoulder and told me Ronnie killed Frances. He told Reggie what he had done two days after."


title: Kray twins

text: A television documentary, "The Gangster and the Pervert Peer" (2009), claimed that Ronnie Kray was a rapist of men. The programme also detailed his relationship with Conservative peer Bob Boothby as well as a "Daily Mirror" investigation into Lord Boothby's dealings with the Kray brothers.


title: Kray twins

text: Jenks and Lorentzen argued that the Krays have entered the realm of a popular myth. The definition of 'myth' used by Jenks and Lorentzen is that formulated by Peter Burke in a 1989 essay "History as a Social Memory", where he defined a 'myth' as: "I am incidentally, using that slippery term 'myth' not in the positivist sense of 'inaccurate history', but in the richer, more positive sense of a story with symbolic meanings, made up of stereotyped incidents and involving characters who are larger than life, whether they are heroes or villains'". Jenks and Lorentzen argued the Krays have became the embodiment of "a particular version of East End history" and as a symbol of a "dark criminal past" associated with the East End.


title: Kray twins

text: The relative rarity of identical twins made the Krays stand out as there were numerous other gangster brother teams in the East End in the 1950s–1960s such as the Richardson brothers, the Nash brothers, the Dixon brothers, the Wood brothers, the Malone brothers, the Webb brothers and the Lambrianou brothers, but only the Krays live on in popular memory with the rest forgotten. The fame/infamy of the Krays is such that as Jenks and Loretzen noted that even today a "vast number" of East Enders "continue to claim an association with the Twins or their family (often despite impossible biographical or temporal discrepancies)". Jenks and Lorentzen argued the Krays have became a 'myth' because in the popular memory the Krays have "became a distillation of the violence, the horror, and the misery that the cultural compass of the East End has meant to the conventional moral order".


title: Kray twins

text: The American scholar Homer Pettey noted that there have been more films made about the Krays than other British gangsters. Pettey argued that popularity of the Krays as cinematic subjects reflected the image of the twins as the embodiment of the "dark sides of British national identity", as symbols of a streak of national perversity, ferocity and cruelty that stands in marked contrast to the normal positive images of the national identity of Britain presented in films. Pettey wrote "To extrapolate from their careers elements of British national identity, however, is not so far-fetched as it might seem. The Kray twins not only cultivated these popular cultural icons of their era, but they also wanted to become media icons...These sadistic twins initiated and accepted media practices that re-presented, re-mythologized and re-contextualized their lives". However, the fact that the Krays' criminal career came to an end with their convictions in 1969 allows their story, however unsavory and unpleasant it might be, to be presented on a reassuring note as the forces of law-and-order finally did triumph.


title: Kray twins

text: Part of the appeal of the legend of the Krays is that their story ended with the "dark side" of life that they represented being vanished. Pettey wrote: "In general, twins' lives fascinate because of their rarity in culture; their singularity forms the stuff of foundational myths, and lends itself to speculations about repetition, dualities and paradoxes. For Ron and Reggie Kray, local East End and London media lore hinted at two personalities, the gangster and the gentleman, the schizophrenic sadist and the clear-headed businessman, and the promiscuous homosexual and the monogamous married man.".


title: Kray twins

text: Ronnie died on 17 March 1995 at the age of 61 at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire. He had suffered a heart attack at Broadmoor Hospital two days earlier. Reggie was allowed out of prison in handcuffs to attend the funeral.


title: Kray twins

text: Reggie died from terminal cancer after being released from prison on compassionate grounds aged 66 on 1 October 2000. During his incarceration, Reggie Kray became a born-again Christian. He was freed from Wayland on 26 August 2000 on compassionate grounds, on the direction of Home Secretary Jack Straw, following the diagnosis of cancer. He had been diagnosed with bladder cancer earlier that year, and the illness had been declared as terminal. The final weeks of his life were spent with his wife of three years, Roberta, in a suite at the Townhouse Hotel at Norwich, after he left the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on 22 September 2000. Ten days after his death he was buried beside his brother Ronnie in Chingford Mount Cemetery. During the funeral, crowds of thousands lined up to applaud.


title: Kray twins

text: Charlie Kray, Ronnie and Reggie's older brother, was released from prison in 1975, after serving seven years of his 10-year sentence for his role in their gangland crimes. Charlie was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment in 1997 for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine in an undercover drug sting. He died in prison of natural causes on 4 April 2000, aged 72, with Reggie allowed out of prison to attend his older brother's funeral.


title: Kray twins

text: The Kray twins have seeded an extensive bibliography leading to many autobiographical accounts, biographical reconstructions, commentaries, analysis, fiction and speculation.


title: Kray twins

text: In addition to films explicitly about the twins, James Fox met Ronnie whilst the twins were held at HM Prison Brixton as part of his research for his role in the 1970 film "Performance", and Richard Burton visited Ronnie at Broadmoor as part of his preparation for his role as a violent gangster in the 1971 film "Villain".


title: Kray twins

text: "Warped" by Martin Malcolm directed by Russell Lucas opened at VAULT Festival in 2019. The play tells the story of two young men who idolise the Krays.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Ansel Elgort (born March 14, 1994) is an American actor and singer. He began his acting career with a supporting role in the horror film "Carrie" (2013) and gained wider recognition for starring as a teenage cancer patient in the romantic drama film "The Fault in Our Stars" (2014) and for his supporting role in "The Divergent Series" (2014–2016). In 2017, he played the title character in Edgar Wright's action thriller "Baby Driver", for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. He is also known for his lead role in "The Goldfinch" (2019) and his performance in the lead role of Tony in Steven Spielberg's 2021 film version of "West Side Story".


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort was born in New York City. His parents are Arthur Elgort, a fashion photographer who has worked extensively for "Vogue" magazine and Grethe Barrett Holby, an opera director. Elgort's father named him after prominent nature photographer Ansel Adams (1902–1984). He is of Russian Jewish descent on his father's side; and of Norwegian, English and German ancestry on his mother's.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort's Norwegian maternal grandmother, Aase-Grethe, was in the Norwegian resistance during World War II and saved Norwegian Jewish children by moving them into neutral Sweden; because of these activities, she was imprisoned in a concentration camp. He is a cousin of comedian Sam Morril, who is the son of his paternal uncle.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort has two older siblings: sister Sophie Elgort (born 1986), a fashion photographer, and brother Warren Elgort (born 1989), a cinematographer. At age nine, his mother took him to try out for School of American Ballet. Elgort went on to study there for five years.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort attended Trinity School (New York City), The Professional Performing Arts School, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School and Stagedoor Manor summer camp. Elgort started taking acting classes at age 12 and at LaGuardia, where he performed in a rendition of "Hairspray" with schoolmate Kyle Jean-Baptiste and starred in the school's productions of "Guys and Dolls". During high school, in 2009, he appeared in "Teen Vogue" alongside Polish model Jac Jagaciak in an editorial photographed by his father.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort's first professional acting appearance was a few months before graduating high school, just days after his 18th birthday, when he premiered a lead role in an Off-Broadway production of "Regrets" in March 2012. His film debut was in the 2013 remake of "Carrie", in the key secondary role of the lead character's prom date. His first highly publicized role was in "Divergent" (2014) as Caleb Prior, the brother of the lead character.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Immediately after the filming of "Divergent" was completed, it was announced that Elgort would play Augustus Waters in the film adaptation of John Green's novel "The Fault in Our Stars" opposite Shailene Woodley, who would play Hazel Grace Lancaster. The film followed the story of Hazel, a teenage cancer patient, who is forced by her parents to attend a support group, where she subsequently meets and falls in love with Waters, a former basketball player. The film, directed by Josh Boone, was released on June 6, 2014. Elgort next co-starred in the dramatic film "Men, Women & Children", directed by Jason Reitman and released in October 2014; it co-starred his LaGuardia classmate Timothée Chalamet.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: In 2014, Elgort was named one of the best actors under 20 years of age. Elgort reunited with "Carrie" co-star Chloë Grace Moretz to present the award for Best Visual Effects at the 2015 Oscars. He also reprised his role, Caleb Prior, in "", the second film of the book series "Divergent", which was released March 20, 2015, and in the third film, "", which was released on March 18, 2016.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: In 2016, Elgort was on a shortlist of actors for the role of Han Solo in "". After Alden Ehrenreich was cast in May 2016, Elgort expressed some relief, saying that if he had been cast, he would have had to change his DJ name, Ansølo.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: In 2017, Elgort played the title role in the action film "Baby Driver", directed by Edgar Wright, and also starring Lily James and Kevin Spacey. Elgort's audition in 2014 required him to lip sync and dance to the song of his choosing. The film received positive reviews and performed well at the box office. Elgort received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance. Also that year, he played Addison Schacht in the drama thriller film "November Criminals", an adaptation of the novel of the same name, starring again with Chloë Grace Moretz.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort starred in the film "Billionaire Boys Club", opposite Kevin Spacey, Cary Elwes, Emma Roberts and Taron Egerton and directed by James Cox. Due to allegations of sexual misconduct against Spacey, the future of the film was uncertain and no release date was set. The film was initially released through video on demand on July 17, 2018, prior to a limited release in theaters on August 17, 2018, by Vertical Entertainment. Elgort played the lead role in the 2019 release "The Goldfinch", an adaptation of Donna Tartt's novel. The film was critically panned and a box office bomb.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort played the lead role of Tony in "West Side Story", an adaptation of the 1957 stage musical the same name directed by Steven Spielberg. The film was released on December 10, 2021 to critical acclaim, and received seven nominations at the 94th Academy Awards, including Best Picture.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort next starred in "Tokyo Vice", a television adaptation of journalist Jake Adelstein's non-fiction memoir for HBO Max. Michael Mann and Destin Daniel Cretton directed episodes of the series, written by J.T. Rogers. Elgort played the lead role of Adelstein and served as one of the series' executive producers. Although production on the series was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, production resumed and the series debuted on HBO Max on April 7, 2022 to positive reviews.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort has been attached to numerous film projects in development: a biopic of American pianist Van Cliburn, "Mayday 109", portraying the role of John F. Kennedy, during his time in the United States Navy, an untitled musical film portraying Hans Christian Andersen, and "The Great High School Impostor", based on the true story of Artur Samarin, a Ukrainian man who in 2012 overstayed his visa and then posed as an American high school student from the ages of 19–23 years old.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Under the name Ansølo, Elgort created a SoundCloud account to publish electronic dance music, and he has remixed songs such as "Born to Die" by Lana Del Rey. In a livestream in February 2014, he said he had signed a record deal with Tom Staar's new label, Staar Traxx, and Steve Angello's label, Size Records.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: His first record, "Unite", was released on April 21, 2014, on Beatport, and May 5, 2014, on iTunes. His second record, "Totem", was released July 21, 2014, on Beatport and iTunes. His single "To Life", a Bar Mitzvah-themed song inflected with klezmer music, was released in September 2015.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: Elgort played at the Electric Zoo Festival main stage in 2014, the Ultra Music Festival main stage in March 2015, played in a red-light dance music event in Amsterdam in 2014, opened some The Chainsmokers shows, a Nervo show and some others shows with his friends Nicky Romero and Martin Garrix. He played his first headline show on his 21st birthday on Pacha NYC.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: In 2015, he signed a record deal with Island/Universal Records, releasing his first single on the label, "Home Alone", on July 8, 2016.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: On February 3, 2017, he released a single called "Thief" under the name Ansel Elgort. The music video featured his girlfriend Violetta Komyshan, a ballet dancer.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: He was featured on rapper Logic's third studio album, "Everybody", released on May 5, 2017, on a song titled "Killing Spree".


title: Ansel Elgort

text: On his 21st birthday, Elgort asked friends, family, and fans to donate to the Thirst Project. In April 2020, he posted a nude photograph of himself on social media as part of a fundraising effort to feed those affected by COVID-19.


title: Ansel Elgort

text: On June 19, 2020, a woman on Twitter accused Elgort of sexually assaulting her in 2014, when she was 17 and he was 20. He denied the allegation in an Instagram post, saying that he and the woman had had a "brief, legal and entirely consensual relationship". The Twitter account @evenmoremohr accused Elgort of sending them unsolicited "dick pics" in 2014, when the account owner was 14. They later deleted their tweet.


title: Montreal

text: Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as "Ville-Marie", or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill around which the early city of Ville-Marie is built. The city is centred on the Island of Montreal, which obtained its name from the same origin as the city, and a few much smaller peripheral islands, the largest of which is Île Bizard. The city is east of the national capital Ottawa, and southwest of the provincial capital, Quebec City.


title: Montreal

text: As of 2021, the city had a population of 1,762,949, and a metropolitan population of 4,291,732, making it the second-largest city, and second-largest metropolitan area in Canada. French is the city's official language. In 2021, it was spoken at home by 59.1% of the population and 69.2% in the Montreal Census Metropolitan Area. Overall, 85.7% of the population of the city of Montreal considered themselves fluent in French while 90.2% could speak it in the metropolitan area. Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Quebec and Canada, with 58.5% of the population able to speak both English and French.


title: Montreal

text: Historically the commercial capital of Canada, Montreal was surpassed in population and in economic strength by Toronto in the 1970s. It remains an important centre of commerce, aerospace, transport, finance, pharmaceuticals, technology, design, education, art, culture, tourism, food, fashion, video game development, film, and world affairs. Montreal is the location of the headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization, and was named a UNESCO City of Design in 2006. In 2017, Montreal was ranked the 12th-most liveable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit in its annual Global Liveability Ranking, although it slipped to rank 40 in the 2021 index, primarily due to stress on the healthcare system from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is regularly ranked as a top ten city in the world to be a university student in the QS World University Rankings.


title: Montreal

text: Montreal has hosted multiple international conferences and events, including the 1967 International and Universal Exposition and the 1976 Summer Olympics. It is the only Canadian city to have held the Summer Olympics. In 2018, Montreal was ranked as a global city. The city hosts the Canadian Grand Prix of Formula One; the Montreal International Jazz Festival, the largest jazz festival in the world; the Just for Laughs festival, the largest comedy festival in the world; and Les Francos de Montréal, the largest French-language music festival in the world. It is also home to the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League, who have won the Stanley Cup more times than any other team.


title: Montreal

text: In the Ojibwe language, the land is called which was "the first stopping place" in the Ojibwe migration story as related in the seven fires prophecy.


title: Montreal

text: In the Mohawk language, the land is called . “Tiohtià꞉ke” is an abbreviation of “Teionihtiohtiá꞉kon”, which loosely translates as “where the group divided/parted ways.”


title: Montreal

text: French settlers from La Flèche in the Loire valley first named their new town, founded in 1642, ("City of Mary"), named for the Virgin Mary. Its current name comes from Mount Royal, the triple-peaked hill in the heart of the city. According to one theory, the name derives from , ( in modern French, although in 16th-century French the forms and were used interchangeably); Cartier's 1535 diary entry, naming the mountain, refers to . One of Cartier's officers was Claude de Pontbriand, lord of the Château de Montréal, in the Occitan-speaking part of France. The toponym "Montréal" and its reversed form "Réalmont", the direct Occitan translation of French (or ), are common in southern France. One possibility, noted by the government of Canada on its website concerning Canadian place names, speculates that the name as it is currently written originated when an early map of 1556 used the Italian name of the mountain, ;


title: Montreal

text: Archaeological evidence in the region indicate that First Nations native people occupied the island of Montreal as early as 4,000 years ago. By the year AD 1000, they had started to cultivate maize. Within a few hundred years, they had built fortified villages. The Saint Lawrence Iroquoians, an ethnically and culturally distinct group from the Iroquois nations of the "Haudenosaunee" (then based in present-day New York), established the village of Hochelaga at the foot of Mount Royal two centuries before the French arrived. Archeologists have found evidence of their habitation there and at other locations in the valley since at least the 14th century.


title: Montreal

text: The French explorer Jacques Cartier visited "Hochelaga" on October 2, 1535, and estimated the population of the native people at Hochelaga to be "over a thousand people". Evidence of earlier occupation of the island, such as those uncovered in 1642 during the construction of Fort Ville-Marie, have effectively been removed.


title: Montreal

text: In 1603, French explorer Samuel de Champlain reported that the St Lawrence Iroquoians and their settlements had disappeared altogether from the St Lawrence valley. This is believed to be due to outmigration, epidemics of European diseases, or intertribal wars. In 1611, Champlain established a fur trading post on the Island of Montreal on a site initially named "La Place Royale". At the confluence of "Petite Riviere" and St. Lawrence River, it is where present-day Pointe-à-Callière stands. On his 1616 map, Champlain named the island Lille de Villemenon in honour of the sieur de Villemenon, a French dignitary who was seeking the viceroyship of New France. In 1639, Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière obtained the Seigneurial title to the Island of Montreal in the name of the Notre Dame Society of Montreal to establish a Roman Catholic mission to evangelize natives.


title: Montreal

text: Dauversiere hired Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, then age 30, to lead a group of colonists to build a mission on his new seigneury. The colonists left France in 1641 for Quebec and arrived on the island the following year. On May 17, 1642, Ville-Marie was founded on the southern shore of Montreal island, with Maisonneuve as its first governor. The settlement included a chapel and a hospital, under the command of Jeanne Mance. By 1643, Ville-Marie had come under Iroquois raids. In 1652, Maisonneuve returned to France to raise 100 volunteers to bolster the colonial population. If the effort had failed, Montreal was to be abandoned and the survivors re-located downriver to Quebec City. Before these 100 arrived in the fall of 1653, the population of Montreal was barely 50 people.


title: Montreal

text: By 1685, Ville-Marie was home to some 600 colonists, most of them living in modest wooden houses. Ville-Marie became a centre for the fur trade and a base for further exploration. In 1689, the English-allied Iroquois attacked Lachine on the Island of Montreal, committing the worst massacre in the history of New France. By the early 18th century, the Sulpician Order was established there. To encourage French settlement, it wanted the Mohawk to move away from the fur trading post at Ville-Marie. It had a mission village, known as Kahnewake, south of the St Lawrence River. The fathers persuaded some Mohawk to make a new settlement at their former hunting grounds north of the Ottawa River. This became Kanesatake. In 1745, several Mohawk families moved upriver to create another settlement, known as Akwesasne. All three are now Mohawk reserves in Canada. The Canadian territory was ruled as a French colony until 1760, when Montreal fell to a British offensive during the Seven Years' War. The colony then surrendered to Great Britain.


title: Montreal

text: Ville-Marie was the name for the settlement that appeared in all official documents until 1705, when Montreal appeared for the first time, although people referred to the "Island of Montreal" long before then.


title: Montreal

text: As part of the American Revolution, the invasion of Quebec resulted after Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga in present-day upstate New York in May 1775 as a launching point to Arnold's invasion of Quebec in September. While Arnold approached the Plains of Abraham, Montreal fell to American forces led by Richard Montgomery on November 13, 1775, after it was abandoned by Guy Carleton. After Arnold withdrew from Quebec City to Pointe-aux-Trembles on November 19, Montgomery's forces left Montreal on December 1 and arrived there on December 3 to plot to attack Quebec City, with Montgomery leaving David Wooster in charge of the city. Montgomery was killed in the failed attack and Arnold, who had taken command, sent Brigadier General Moses Hazen to inform Wooster of the defeat.


title: Montreal

text: Wooster left Hazen in command on March 20, 1776, as he left to replace Arnold in leading further attacks on Quebec City. On April 19, Arnold arrived in Montreal to take over command from Hazen, who remained as his second-in-command. Hazen sent Colonel Timothy Bedel to form a garrison of 390 men 40 miles upriver in a garrison at Les Cèdres, Quebec, to defend Montreal against the British army. In the Battle of the Cedars, Bedel's lieutenant Isaac Butterfield surrendered to George Forster.


title: Montreal

text: Forster advanced to Fort Senneville on May 23. By May 24, Arnold was entrenched in Montreal's borough of Lachine. Forster initially approached Lachine, then withdrew to Quinze-Chênes. Arnold's forces then abandoned Lachine to chase Forster. The Americans burned Senneville on May 26. After Arnold crossed the Ottawa River in pursuit of Forster, Forster's cannons repelled Arnold's forces. Forster negotiated a prisoner exchange with Henry Sherburne and Isaac Butterfield, resulting in a May 27 boating of their deputy Lieutenant Park being returned to the Americans. Arnold and Forster negotiated further and more American prisoners were returned to Arnold at Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, ("Fort Anne") on May 30 (delayed two days by wind).


title: Montreal

text: Arnold eventually withdrew his forces back to the New York fort of Ticonderoga by the summer. On June 15, Arnold's messenger approaching Sorel spotted Carleton returning with a fleet of ships and notified him. Arnold's forces abandoned Montreal (attempting to burn it down in the process) prior to the June 17 arrival of Carleton's fleet.


title: Montreal

text: The Americans did not return British prisoners in exchange, as previously agreed, due to accusations of abuse, with Congress repudiating the agreement at the protest of George Washington. Arnold blamed Colonel Timothy Bedel for the defeat, removing him and Lieutenant Butterfield from command and sending them to Sorel for court-martial. The retreat of the American army delayed their court martial until August 1, 1776, when they were convicted and cashiered at Ticonderoga. Bedel was given a new commission by Congress in October 1777 after Arnold was assigned to defend Rhode Island in July 1777.


title: Montreal

text: Montreal was incorporated as a city in 1832. The opening of the Lachine Canal permitted ships to bypass the unnavigable Lachine Rapids, while the construction of the Victoria Bridge established Montreal as a major railway hub. The leaders of Montreal's business community had started to build their homes in the Golden Square Mile from about 1850. By 1860, it was the largest municipality in British North America and the undisputed economic and cultural centre of Canada.


title: Montreal

text: In the 19th century, maintaining Montreal's drinking water became increasingly difficult with the rapid increase in population. A majority of the drinking water was still coming from the city's harbour, which was busy and heavily trafficked, leading to the deterioration of the water within. In the mid-1840s, the City of Montreal installed a water system that would pump water from the St. Lawrence and into cisterns. The cisterns would then be transported to the desired location. This was not the first water system of its type in Montreal, as there had been one in private ownership since 1801. In the middle of the 19th century, water distribution was carried out by "fontainiers". The fountainiers would open and close water valves outside of buildings, as directed, all over the city. As they lacked modern plumbing systems it was impossible to connect all buildings at once and it also acted as a conservation method. However, the population was not finished rising — it rose from 58,000 in 1852 to 267,000 by 1901.


title: Montreal

text: Montreal was the capital of the Province of Canada from 1844 to 1849, but lost its status when a Tory mob burnt down the Parliament building to protest the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill. Thereafter, the capital rotated between Quebec City and Toronto until in 1857, Queen Victoria herself established Ottawa as the capital due to strategic reasons. The reasons were twofold. First, because it was located more in the interior of the Province of Canada, it was less susceptible to attack from the United States. Second, and perhaps more importantly, because it lay on the border between French and English Canada, Ottawa was seen as a compromise between Montreal, Toronto, Kingston and Quebec City, which were all vying to become the young nation's official capital. Ottawa retained the status as capital of Canada when the Province of Canada joined with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to form the Dominion of Canada in 1867.


title: Montreal

text: After World War I, the prohibition movement in the United States led to Montreal becoming a destination for Americans looking for alcohol. Unemployment remained high in the city and was exacerbated by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.


title: Montreal

text: During World War II, Mayor Camillien Houde protested against conscription and urged Montrealers to disobey the federal government's registry of all men and women. The federal government, part of the Allied forces, was furious over Houde's stand and held him in a prison camp until 1944. That year, the government decided to institute conscription to expand the armed forces and fight the Axis powers. (See Conscription Crisis of 1944.)


title: Montreal

text: By 1951, Montreal's population had surpassed one million. However, Toronto's growth had begun challenging Montreal's status as the economic capital of Canada. Indeed, the volume of stocks traded at the Toronto Stock Exchange had already surpassed that traded at the Montreal Stock Exchange in the 1940s. The Saint Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, allowing vessels to bypass Montreal. In time, this development led to the end of the city's economic dominance as businesses moved to other areas. During the 1960s, there was continued growth as Canada's tallest skyscrapers, new expressways and the subway system known as the Montreal Metro were finished during this time. Montreal also held the World's Fair of 1967, better known as Expo67.


title: Montreal

text: The 1970s ushered in a period of wide-ranging social and political changes, stemming largely from the concerns of the French-speaking majority about the conservation of their culture and language, given the traditional predominance of the English Canadian minority in the business arena. The October Crisis and the 1976 election of the Parti Québécois, which supported sovereign status for Quebec, resulted in the departure of many businesses and people from the city. In 1976, Montreal hosted the Summer Olympics. While the event brought the city international prestige and attention, the Olympic Stadium built for the event resulted in massive debt for the city. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Montreal experienced a slower rate of economic growth than many other major Canadian cities. Montreal was the site of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre, one of Canada's worst mass shootings, where 25-year-old Marc Lépine shot and killed 14 people, all of them women, and wounding 14 other people before shooting himself at École Polytechnique.


title: Montreal

text: Montreal was merged with the 27 surrounding municipalities on the Island of Montreal on January 1, 2002, creating a unified city encompassing the entire island. There was substantial resistance from the suburbs to the merger, with the perception being that it was forced on the mostly English suburbs by the Parti Québécois. As expected, this move proved unpopular and several mergers were later rescinded. Several former municipalities, totalling 13% of the population of the island, voted to leave the unified city in separate referendums in June 2004. The demerger took place on January 1, 2006, leaving 15 municipalities on the island, including Montreal. Demerged municipalities remain affiliated with the city through an agglomeration council that collects taxes from them to pay for numerous shared services. The 2002 mergers were not the first in the city's history. Montreal annexed 27 other cities, towns and villages beginning with Hochelaga in 1883, with the last prior to 2002 being Pointe-aux-Trembles in 1982.


title: Montreal

text: The 21st century has brought with it a revival of the city's economic and cultural landscape. The construction of new residential skyscrapers, two super-hospitals (the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal and McGill University Health Centre), the creation of the Quartier des Spectacles, reconstruction of the Turcot Interchange, reconfiguration of the Decarie and Dorval interchanges, construction of the new Réseau électrique métropolitain, gentrification of Griffintown, subway line extensions and the purchase of new subway cars, the complete revitalization and expansion of Trudeau International Airport, the completion of Quebec Autoroute 30, the reconstruction of the Champlain Bridge and the construction of a new toll bridge to Laval are helping Montreal continue to grow.


title: Montreal

text: Montreal is in the southwest of the province of Quebec. The city covers most of the Island of Montreal at the confluence of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. The port of Montreal lies at one end of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the river gateway that stretches from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. Montreal is defined by its location between the Saint Lawrence river to its south and the Rivière des Prairies to its north. The city is named after the most prominent geographical feature on the island, a three-head hill called Mount Royal, topped at above sea level.


title: Montreal

text: Montreal is at the centre of the Montreal Metropolitan Community, and is bordered by the city of Laval to the north; Longueuil, Saint-Lambert, Brossard, and other municipalities to the south; Repentigny to the east and the West Island municipalities to the west. The anglophone enclaves of Westmount, Montreal West, Hampstead, Côte Saint-Luc, the Town of Mount Royal and the francophone enclave Montreal East are all surrounded by Montreal.


title: Montreal

text: Montreal is classified as a warm-summer humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification: Dfb).


title: Montreal

text: Summers are warm to hot and humid with a daily maximum average of in July; temperatures in excess of are common. Conversely, cold fronts can bring crisp, drier and windy weather in the early and later parts of summer.


title: Montreal

text: Winter brings cold, snowy, windy, and, at times, icy weather, with a daily average ranging from in January. However, some winter days rise above freezing, allowing for rain on an average of 4 days in January and February each. Usually, snow covering some or all bare ground lasts on average from the first or second week of December until the last week of March. While the air temperature does not fall below every year, the wind chill often makes the temperature feel this low to exposed skin.


title: Montreal

text: Spring and fall are pleasantly mild but prone to drastic temperature changes; spring even more so than fall. Late season heat waves as well as "Indian summers" are possible. Early and late season snow storms can occur in November and March, and more rarely in April. Montreal is generally snow free from late April to late October. However, snow can fall in early to mid-October as well as early to mid-May on rare occasions.


title: Montreal

text: The lowest temperature in Environment Canada's books was on January 15, 1957, and the highest temperature was on August 1, 1975, both at Dorval International Airport.


title: Montreal

text: Before modern weather record keeping (which dates back to 1871 for McGill), a minimum temperature almost 5 degrees lower was recorded at 7 a.m. on January 10, 1859, where it registered at .


title: Montreal

text: Annual precipitation is around , including an average of about of snowfall, which occurs from November through March. Thunderstorms are common in the period beginning in late spring through summer to early fall; additionally, tropical storms or their remnants can cause heavy rains and gales. Montreal averages 2,050 hours of sunshine annually, with summer being the sunniest season, though slightly wetter than the others in terms of total precipitation—mostly from thunderstorms.


title: Montreal

text: For over a century and a half, Montreal was the industrial and financial centre of Canada. This legacy has left a variety of buildings including factories, elevators, warehouses, mills, and refineries, that today provide an invaluable insight into the city's history, especially in the downtown area and the Old Port area. There are 50 National Historic Sites of Canada, more than any other city.