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  • Peaky Blinders: The Real Story

  • Peaky Blinders, Book 1
  • By: Carl Chinn
  • Narrated by: Carl Chinn
  • Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
  • 3.6 out of 5 stars (18 ratings)

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Peaky Blinders: The Real Story

By: Carl Chinn
Narrated by: Carl Chinn
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Publisher's Summary

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

The Peaky Blinders as we know them, thanks to the hit TV series, are infused with drama and dread. Fashionably dressed, the charismatic but deeply flawed Shelby family blind enemies by slashing them with the disposable safety razor blades stitched in to the peaks of their flat caps, as they fight bloody gangland wars involving Irish terrorists and the authorities led by a devious Home Secretary, Winston Churchill.

But who were the real Peaky Blinders? Did they really exist?

Well-known social historian, broadcaster and author, Carl Chinn, has spent decades searching them out. Now he reveals the true story of the notorious Peaky Blinders, one of whom was his own great grandfather and, like the Shelbys, his grandfather was an illegal bookmaker in back-street Birmingham.

In this gripping social history, Chinn shines a light on the rarely reported struggles of the working class in one of the great cities of the British Empire before the First World War. The story continues after 1918 as some Peaky Blinders transformed into the infamous Birmingham Gang. Led by the real Billy Kimber, they fought a bloody war with the London gangsters Darby Sabini and Alfie Solomon over valuable protection rackets extorting money from bookmakers across the booming postwar racecourses of Britain.

Drawing together a remarkably wide-range of original sources, including interviews with relatives of the 1920s gangsters, Peaky Blinders: The Real Story adds a new dimension to the true history of Birmingham's underworld and fact behind its fiction.

Learn more in Book 2 'Peaky Blinders: The Legacy' also now available in audiobook!

©2019 Carl Chinn (P)2019 Bonnier Books UK

What listeners say about Peaky Blinders: The Real Story

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Race Course Ruffians

The violent sections are a bit blow to blow & repetitive but the history is much interesting once we get into the territory of betting shops & race courses - excellent working class fodder.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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  • Bob
  • 07-11-2019

Not a satisfying listen

Repetitive must have told listener hundreds of times where the term Peaky Blinders came from. Seems to go over the same stuff ad nausem
Boring narrative voice
Couldn’t listen to complete book maybe listened to an hour or so.
Maybe it is just me but I found it boring and uninteresting on a drive across Australia

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Not my cup of tea

I'd have to agree with the other reviews. Repetitive and dry. Focuses on small details and feels as if a lot of it is just regurgitating newspaper articles and court documents.

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