Notorious : how the Kray twins made themselves immortal

The Krays: gangsters, extortionists, murderers, celebrities. John Pearson's The Profession of Violence, the groundbreaking and bestselling official biography of the Kray twins, was penned more than forty years ago and sparked off in the author and the country at large an obsession with the notorious pair.

Ron died in 1995. Reg followed him five years later, and both of their funerals drew crowds on a scale unknown for film stars, let alone for two departed murderers.

Since then public fascination with the twins has never flagged and people still refer to them like popular celebrities.

Why? This is the question Pearson asked himself, and over the past three years he has been re-examining their history, unearthing much previously unknown material which sheds new light on the deadly duo.

Notorious re-examines their tortured and utterly unique relationship as identical twins, reveals a new and unsuspected murders and sheds fresh light on the killings of George Cornell and Jack 'the Hat' McVitie. And most riveting of all are the revelations of how Ron Kray caused a major sex scandal in which a prime minister condoned the most outrageous establishment cover-up in British politics since the war.

Notorious contains many more surprises and confirms the Kray twins' status as Britain's most notorious criminals.