Jamie Reid – författare

SHORTLISTED FOR THE TELEGRAPH SPORTS BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR AWARD 2019Monsieur X is a dazzling tale of glamour, riches, violence and ultimately tragedy.Patrice des Moutis was a handsome, charming and well-educated Frenchman with an aristocratic family, a respectable insurance business, and a warm welcome in the smartest Parisian salons. He was also a compulsive gambler and illegal bookie. Between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, Des Moutis made a daring attempt to beat the French state-run betting system. His success so alarmed the authorities that they repeatedly changed the rules of betting in an effort to stop him. And so a battle of wills began, all played out on the front pages of the daily newspapers as the general public willed Des Moutis on to ever greater triumphs.He remained one step ahead of the law until finally the government criminalised his activities, driving him into the arms of the underworld. Eventually the net began to close, high-profile characters found themselves the target of the state’s investigation, and people began turning up dead...

A Temporary Stranger is comprised of three sections: Homages, Fake Poems, and Recollections. In Homages we find poems of reverence and honour, tributes to writers who had opened up the world of poetry to Jamie. There are poems to Spicer, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Breton, Francis Ponge, Tristan Tzara and others. At the centre of A Temporary Stranger are the Fake Poems, so called because "There is no art on earth that can fully represent the exact and flowing experience of viewing stone within the flow of water and the waving light within the water and around the stone, and the subsequent sense of awe and beauty that arises in the interaction between the seer and the seen... . In that sense, all art is fake... " The third section, Recollections, is an assemblage of articles paeans, really - to Robin Blaser, bill bissett, Warren Tallman, John Newlove, Curt Lang, Nellie McClung, Artie Gold, Kim Goldberg, Kate Braid, and others. Here, as friend and editor Karl Siegler states in his Foreword, "we encounter memory-not as a form of nostalgia for a bygone golden age of a romanticised pastoral arcadia ... but as an historical record of who did what when, and to what end, throughout the counterculture revolution that shaped the lives of Jamie Reid and his companions over the past six decades."

Time for Magic offers an entrancing overview of Jamie Reid's incredible art, structured around the eight seasonal festivals of the Wheel of the Year (the equinoxes and solstices plus Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain). Jamie observed these festivals, holding rituals at his allotment in Liverpool, and focused on this theme in his later paintings. This book features key Wheel of the Year artworks as well as famous earlier pieces, including the pre-punk, Situationist-inspired agit-prop and the work he produced for the Sex Pistols. Curator Stephen Ellcock has selected the art and in his own inimitable creative style arranged it into season-themed chapters, as well as finding images of Druidic ceremonies held by Jamie's great-uncle, Chief Druid George Watson MacGregor Reid. Stephen Ellcock in conversation with John Marchant introduces Jamie's life, legacy and love of making trouble; John Marchant provides captions giving deep insight in Jamie's work; and Philip Carr-Gomm writes about the Wheel of the Year and how it can help us find a new way of being in this era of climate crisis.

Welcome to an after-dark world of new money, hedonism and excess. A world of luxurious nightclubs where racketeers, gamblers and glamorous women mixed with entrepreneurs, bunny girls, politicians and policemen.Bandit Country is a gripping, atmospheric true-crime noir. It is the story of Britain's 1960's gambling boom, as the country emerged from years of hardship to embrace exotic night-life and entertainment, all supplied by the Mafia.It is an emotional, visceral story of brothers: the Luvaglios, who dreamed of an empire founded among the hard industrial skylines and bridges of Newcastle, built on good times and bright lights - dreams that, for a moment, were lived in technicolour; and the Kray twins, who looked up to this new kingdom from London and saw a slice of action they wanted for themselves.And above all, it is a story of betrayal, murder and a shocking miscarriage of justice, as empires crumble, friends turn on friends, and the good times come screeching to a halt. Sure to be loved by fans of Peaky Blinders, this story - that inspired classic British gangster film Get Carter - isn't quite like anything you've read before. Turn the page and roll the dice. . .

The Next Arkle explores Ireland’s passionate love affair with Cheltenham through the astonishing story of Carvill’s Hill, a brilliant but flawed racehorse, and his notorious owner, Liam ‘Billy’ Marks. Marks, a professional gambler and major figure in Ireland’s corrupt 1980s beef trade. Marks, who likened himself to the slick lawyer, 'Razzle Dazzle' Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago, had a turbulent career punctuated by a kidnapping, threats of violence, innumerable court cases and accusations ranging from fraud and corruption to IRA-linked money laundering. Through all this chaos, he clung to one conviction: that one day the giant Carvill’s Hill would win the Cheltenham Gold Cup. A generation of Irish race-goers, longing for a new champion in an era of English dominance, shared that dream. What followed was dramatic, spectacular but ultimately heartbreaking. This gripping true-life story feels like a Hollywood film!

Victor Chandler, the most recognisable face in bookmaking, tells his remarkable life story in 'Put Your Life On It: Staying At The Top in the Cut-throat World of Gambling.'In this new authorised biography written by Jamie Reid, Chandler will reveal how gambling was in his blood from birth. Discover how his grandfather dealt with Darby Sabini's Italian mob, Alfie Solomons and the real Peaky Blinders. How his father, Victor senior, built up the firm only for illness to force 'Young Victor' into the fray at the age of 23 - the start of a high life and fast times.To begin with, he found the going tough. He almost accepted an offer to sell up from Playboy Bookmakers. But fortunately he stuck with it just in time to enjoy his first profitable Royal Ascot and from then on there was no going back.In the face of the UK recession in the 1990s he went out to the Far East and began duelling audaciously with colossal Asian punters while dodging the attentions of the Triads in Hong Kong and Macau. Then at the end of the decade he sparked a revolution by moving his entire business offshore to Gibraltar; he is often credited with being the first to take gambling online.Victor shares his often hilarious memories of 40 years of a high-octane racing and bookmaking life, populated by a huge cast of colourful characters including the artist Lucian Freud, who painted 'VC' as well as betting with him.