Peaky Blinders

The Sunday Times bestseller and companion to Netflix's hit Peaky Blinders phenomenon.

Peaky Blinders fans, meet the real gangs of 1920s Birmingham. Now streaming on Netflix and reignited by the blockbuster film Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man starring Cillian Murphy, the Shelby saga has never had a bigger audience — and this Sunday Times bestseller reveals the true story behind it. Social historian Professor Carl Chinn, MBE, PhD, digs past the razor-sharp legend to expose the true history of Britain's most notorious backstreet gangsters: the real Billy Kimber, Darby Sabini, and Alfie Solomon, and the racecourse wars that made and broke them.

Chinn's family lived this history: his own great-grandfather was a real peaky blinder, and his grandfather ran an illegal Birmingham bookmaking operation like the one that built the Shelby fortune. Drawing on decades of original research, rare photographs, and interviews with gangsters' descendants, he reveals how the actual "sloggers" and razor gangs of Victorian and Edwardian Birmingham gave way to a citywide criminal network more brutal, and more human, than any TV or film script.

Essential for every Netflix Peaky Blinders fan who wants the facts behind Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby, this gripping social history brings Britain's forgotten underworld roaring back to life.