'Running with the Krays'
by Billy Webb

Best Book I've Read All Year Award - By Amanda Hallay

It is rare that a book can so delight, enthral, and intrigue a reader, yet Running with the Krays by Billy Webb delivers in all criteria. Never mind about the Krays, the notorious London gangsters who get a passing mention in Billy Webb's autobiography (his brief encounter with the Krays is merely a sales ploy), it is Webb's inimitable prose which propels what could have been just another book of reminiscence from London's gangland into something…timeless, something…infinite.

Billy Webb (the man) was a small-time hood in southeast London in the '50s and '60s who did, indeed, "run with the Krays" when the three had escaped their National Service. Billy Webb (the man) was clearly a nasty villain of the highest order; it is Billy Webb the author who is of interest to us here. He is a lost gem in the annals of English literature, a true pearl.

I knew I was onto a winner with the first line of his autobiography: "Most of my childhood is a blank." Fortunately, the rest of Billy's life is far from blank, and he recalls in minute detail how "Maltese Joe was giving it too much lip 'round Tottenham High Street and we knew we had to sort him. Me and my brother, Ron, got together a team of top-notch fists and done Maltese Joe proper." The elegance of his prose cannot be overstated. In the 206 glorious pages of his opus, we learn of his first business venture ("I had a bit of a say in a billiard hall"), to his farcical court case, where Mr. Webb's academic interest and deep knowledge of the British legal system come exquisitely into play ("My defence were taking the piss. The trial was bollocks.").

The delicacy of his work is often quite moving, the passage concerning the unfortunate fate of one of his (many) adversaries a wonderful example of Webb's skill: "Then I walked through the entrance of the toilet and straight up to the loud-mouthed boy and smashed his face in. He dropped like a sack of potatoes. Then I spun round and tore into another bloke, gave him a right-hander and kicked him up the arse to help him on his way."

Exquisite.

Never before have 206 pages held me so spellbound, so rapturous with enchantment. In fairness, Billy Webb does begin his oeuvre with at least a semblance of literary restraint, but at some point, both he (and, obviously, his editor) just gave up ("He was a right fucking liberty-taker and I knew I'd have to 'do' him. I never had no time for liberty-takers, and he was giving it the big fucking mouth! He was fucking asking to be done!").

I have always been an admirer of comedy fiction, and although Running with the Krays was intended as anything but, I have never laughed as hard or as consistently as I did when reading Billy Webb's masterpiece. And a masterpiece it is. Webb is a walking cliché of the English criminal classes, every phrase he writes culled from British B-movie. To its credit, Running with the Krays is extremely evocative (if one wants to evoke images of '60s prisons and blood-stained Bingo halls), and it serves as a melancholy reminder that the days when a man could earn a living by transforming his mum's spare bedroom into an illegal gambling joint are long gone.

Gunn! Gilbert! Pelen! Rosenstein! Don't be liberty-takers! Enough of your Shakespeare and your Milton! Those blokes were "toffs for tossers!" Instead, take your students on a voyage of literary discovery (right 'round Depford) with Walking with the Krays.

Walking with the Krays by Billy Webb is available from Amazon.co.uk, 5.99 G.B.S.