Jimmy Boyle (artist)

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Jimmy Boyle (born 1944 in Gorbals, Glasgow) is a Scottish sculptor and novelist who was formerly a gangster.

Once reputed to be the most violent man in Scotland, in 1967 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of another gangland figure, William "Babs" Rooney, although Boyle denies that he committed this killing. During his incarceration in the special unit of Barlinnie Prison, he turned to art and wrote an autobiography, A Sense of Freedom (1977), which has since been filmed.

On his release from prison he moved to Edinburgh to continue his artistic career. He designed the largest concrete sculpture in Europe called "Gulliver" for The Craigmillar Festival Society in 1976. The following year he co-wrote the play The Hardman with Tom McGrath, premiered at the Traverse Theatre.

Boyle has also published Pain of Confinement: Prison Diaries (1984), and a novel, Hero of the Underworld (1999). The latter was adapted for a French film, La Rage et le Reve des Condamnes (The Anger and Dreams of the Condemned), and won the best documentary prize at the Fifa Montreal awards in 2002. He also has written a forthcoming novel, A Stolen Smile, which is about the theft of the Mona Lisa and how it ends up hidden on a Scottish housing estate; Disney reportedly bought the film rights.[1]

In 1980, upon his release from prison, he married psychotherapist Sarah Juliet Trevelyan, a daughter of the former British film censor John Trevelyan. They met in the Special Unit of Glasgow's Barlinnie jail, and had two children, Susannah Angela and Kydd. Boyle's son from a previous relationship, James, was stabbed to death in 1994. The Boyles later divorced.

He lives between France and Morocco[2] with his second wife, Kate Fenwick, a British actress.[3][4][5] They married in Marrakech, Morocco, on 27 October 2007.

In his memoir Dandy in the Underworld [6] (Sceptre, 2007), the British writer and Northern Foods empire heir Sebastian Horsley claims that he and Boyle had an affair. [7]

The character Nicky Dryden in the 1999 film The Debt Collector is loosely based on Boyle.

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