Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins

by John Pearson

  He also cultivated influential friends in the highest places including press lords like Beaverbrook and Camrose, important journalists like William Haley, editor of The Times, and Colin Coote, who edited the Daily Telegraph. This meant that, despite his rakish reputation, Boothby was beginning to enjoy an enviable position at the very heart of the British Establishment.

  There was, however, just one danger. Transgression can become addictive. Having got away with so much for so many years the new Lord Boothby started taking bigger and yet bigger risks. It was a dangerous game, even though imminent changes in the law on gay behaviour meant that almost anything was now more or less acceptable. In Boothby’s case a great deal clearly was, particularly since he had recently acquired an experienced enabler. This was another rogue politician notorious for his own erratic sexuality, the journalist, future peer and Chairman of the Labour Party, Tom Driberg.

  It was, in many ways, a most unlikely friendship. Driberg was on the extreme left of the Labour Party while Boothby was embedded in the Tory establishment. One of the best informed journalists in London, Driberg had started the William Hickey column in the Daily Express and, according to its defence correspondent Chapman Pincher, not only had he been a close friend of both the spies Burgess and Maclean but he himself spied regularly for Russia and held the rank of colonel in the Soviet KGB. This sounds unlikely but was not impossible. With Tom Driberg almost anything was possible. Certainly he was one of the highest-paid journalists on the Express and Lord Beaverbrook treated him accordingly. Driberg and Boothby were both ‘good company’ and the two of them would often meet at Beaverbrook’s famous dinner parties at Cherkley, his country house near Leatherhead in Surrey.

  Driberg’s friend, the theatrical producer Joan Littlewood, had already introduced him to Reg Kray at The Double R Club, and the meeting was apparently a great success. Driberg got on well with criminals and Reg was quick to see the value of a friendly politician. This was as far as things had gone until the late summer of 1963, when Driberg discovered Esmeralda’s Barn.

  He must have thought he was in paradise. Downstairs boys and criminals. Upstairs gambling and yet more criminals, among whom was one of Ronnie’s latest hangers-on, ‘Mad’ Teddy Smith, aspiring villain, would-be playwright and seriously rough-trade homosexual. Neither he nor Driberg could resist each other and a close relationship began. Rumour had it that, along with other favours, Driberg used to tell ‘Mad’ Teddy about rich friends’ houses he could burgle; and he couldn’t wait to introduce his friend Bob Boothby to Esmeralda’s Barn, where he had already spotted the perfect boy for him, a good-looking late teenager called Leslie Holt.

  The son of a cockney dustman, Holt was already one of Ron Kray’s ever-growing band of lovers. Ron had appointed him a trainee croupier at the club and when he wasn’t working there he doubled as a cat burglar and male prostitute. He was small, blond, blue-eyed and apparently immensely charming. As Driberg had predicted, from the moment he clapped eyes on him Boothby was besotted.

  Although Ron Kray was not remotely interested in gambling, he always insisted that when anyone ‘interesting’ turned up at Esmeralda’s Barn he was to be informed instantly. That evening, when Holt reported back that he had just hooked Boothby, Ron ordered him to get to know him better. One never knew. He might be useful.

  By now, having helped the Twins acquire Esmeralda’s Barn and earned them large amounts of money through his long-firm frauds, Leslie ‘The Brain’ Payne, was very much in favour with them both, and was wondering how he could exploit the situation. Protection rackets and long-firm frauds were fine, but they could get boring, and like the lively Sixties con man that he was, Les Payne, was thinking big. He had been hearing of a fascinating scheme, backed with foreign capital, to build a great new town near Enugu in Nigeria. To set his own ball rolling and with the help of his astute but equally crooked accountant Freddy Gore, Payne had already set up his own company, the impressively named Imperial Development Corporation. The Corporation soon attracted interest from the Nigerian government and also from the reputable British construction company Turriff International. Payne even claimed to have the blessing of the British Colonial Office. Things were moving. Detailed plans were drawn up for Les Payne’s new Enugu, and the Nigerians became excited by the news that a high-powered delegation from his Imperial Development Corporation would visit Enugu if their government invited them. What Payne didn’t tell them was that the delegation would consist of Freddy Gore, the Kray Twins and himself.

  When Payne informed the Twins about the invitation Ron was particularly excited. He had always dreamed of visiting black Africa. The Nigerians paid their air fares and he and Reg enjoyed the novelty of being flown first-class to Enugu where they were feted by welcoming Nigerians. Ron brought back a four-foot ebony model of an elephant to take the place of the live one he had tried to buy from Harrods. He was more interested still in tales he heard about the local leopard men, ritual assassins who supposedly ate their victims. But, most of all, what Ronnie really loved was being treated as a VIP.

  For a while it seemed that Les Payne’s biggest scam was working. It had all the elements of a genuine proposal which he hoped might get financial backing from the British government and soon he was talking to the Twins of making more than two million pounds in profits if the plan succeeded. All it needed was some famous and respected public figure as his company’s chairman. What about Lord Boothby? Billy Hill had recently put Reggie Maudling, the chancellor of the exchequer, on his payroll and Boothby, with that famous voice of his, could have sold ketchup to a cannibal.

  Leslie Holt appears to have arranged the meeting and Boothby duly invited Ron to his flat in Eaton Place, which also served him as an office, to discuss his proposition. Holt was already there when Ron arrived, together with Teddy Smith and a photographer called Bernard Black. When he was introduced to Boothby, Ron explained that he liked to have his photograph taken with famous people. Presumably flattered, Boothby agreed and Black took several photographs, one of Ron and Boothby sitting together on the office sofa and another of Ron and Boothby sitting with Leslie Holt between them. After this there were two more meetings at the flat to discuss the proposal before Boothby, sensible for once, decided to withdraw from the project – but not from his relationship with Ron Kray, and still less from the one with Leslie Holt. It was shortly after this that Lord Boothby invited Ronald Kray to dinner at the House of Lords.

  In its way it’s hard to imagine anything more socially unthinkable – and hence to Boothby irresistible – than entering the dining room at the House of Lords with a psychotic gangster like Ron Kray as your guest. But if there had been something even more unthinkable, it would have been to have taken him on afterwards for a nightcap at that embatttled stronghold of clubland, White’s Club in St James’s. Still, Boothby was the man who could get away with anything and for him the unthinkable had a way of becoming overpoweringly attractive. (When he asked Ron what he was drinking Ron supposedly replied ‘I’ve always wanted to try one of those prawn cocktails.’ This suggests that Ron was onto his lordship even then.)

  When Ron told me all about this some years later he said that while he was in White’s Club, Boothby introduced him to another member of the club, the distinguished judge Lord Cohen, ‘and we ‘ad a very interesting conversation about life in prison.’

  But bringing violent criminals into social contact with distinguished law lords wasn’t Boothby’s primary concern when mixing socially with Ronnie Kray. Transgressing socially was only a beginning. Transgressing sexually was his ultimate obsession.

  As a compulsive gambler himself, Boothby must have known the addictive fascination of disaster, but when he started to frequent a second-floor flat in Cedra Court, Cazenove Road in Walthamstow he was indulging in a far more hazardous gamble than chemmy or losing on the greyhounds at White City Stadium. For when it came to sex Ron was all too ready to oblige, though not in person. Neither he nor Bob were into sex with grown men.
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br />   In the old East End there was a long tradition of catering for the more exotic sexual tastes of Victorian and Edwardian gay gentry in the male bordellos of Limehouse and Wapping, where the police had always known better than to intrude. Apparently this old tradition lingered. If one’s taste was rough-trade sex it can’t come much rougher than with Ronald Kray.

  When Ron took on the lease on David Litvinoff’s flat in Ashburn Gardens and moved in with him he also took on Litvinoff’s boyfriend, the young Irish ex-stable boy called Bobby Buckley. Soon Buckley had a new job as a croupier at the Barn and it was from there that he brought in Leslie Holt to console his former lover David Litvinoff.

  Ron had always been promiscuous. Back in the early days at the billiard hall he would take his pick from the boys who formed his so-called ‘information service’. He did the same at Esmeralda’s Barn and since he was able to ensure that many of the croupiers and waiters were handsome, young and homosexual, the Barn inevitably became the centre of Ron’s own private vice ring. Ron was always too chaotic to have organised everything that followed but he had someone close at hand who was all too willing to oblige.

  It was around this time that one of the regulars at Esmeralda’s Barn was the painter Lucien Freud, who used to gamble there along with his friend and fellow painter Francis Bacon. Unlike Bacon, Freud was not interested in boys, but like many others he enjoyed Litvinoff’s way-out company and conversation, and ended up by painting his portrait. Sometime later, something happened which brought their friendship to an abrupt conclusion. Freud has never disclosed what this was but he made it fairly clear what he thought of Litvinoff in the title he now added to his portrait. He called it The Procurer. Freud wasn’t wrong in this, for among the many services which Litvinoff performed for his gay friends in Chelsea was, as Freud suggested, procuring, or pimping, providing boys for sexual purposes.

  Since Ron already had his own informal vice ring there had been no shortage of boys at Esmeralda’s Barn anxious to supplement their earnings, and between them he and Litvinoff were soon organising sex shows for their friends at Ashburn Gardens and later on at Cedra Court, Ron’s flat in Walthamstow. As well as the inevitable blue movies, there were performances specially tailored to the tastes of those whom Ron wanted to impress. According to one witness, one of Boothby’s particular pleasures was to watch boys excrete above him as he lay beneath a glass-topped table. On one occasion he brought along his friend and fellow TV celebrity, A. J. P. Taylor. What that great historian made of these proceedings is not recorded.

  As for Ron, one would be underestimating him to imagine that he was doing this for fun or simply to amuse his friends. It was more serious than that. Obsessed with the idea that the upper classes always save their own he was enjoying the sense of power he got from indulging their perversions, particularly those of powerful politicians like Driberg and Lord Boothby who would otherwise not have come within a mile of him. One never knew when help from such a quarter might be useful.

  Boothby’s motives were also interesting. This sort of thing was fine for Francis Bacon, who liked the company of criminals and had no reputation to lose. But Boothby must have been aware that he was mixing risk with pleasure, when Ron repaid him for his dinner at the House of Lords by taking him to his favourite West End restaurant, the old Society in Jermyn Street (better known today as the nightclub Tramp). Ron was accompanied by a cat burglar called Charlie Clark and a ganster called Billy Exley, together with their wives. Boothby brought along the goodwife Goodfellow.

  Once again Ron was careful to arrange for a photographer to record the happy scene. But far from letting this worry him, from the smile his lordship presented to the camera Boothby was remarkably pleased with himself and quite unconcerned by any risk he might have been running.

  The various photographs that Ronnie made a point of getting are more interesting than they seem. Had he wished to blackmail anyone he could have easily obtained obscene pictures. But that was not what Ronnie had in mind. Mad he might have been, but stupid he was not. What he wanted was evidence to prove his friendship with important public figures whose help he felt he could rely on in an emergency.

  In contrast with Ron Kray, Boothby strikes one as a touch pathetic. He clearly loved the fact that as a TV celebrity everybody knew him, and he must have known that his blatant presence in the company of criminals would sooner or later be brought to the attention of the law. But presumably he was also so conceited that he thought that no one in authority would dare to do anything about it. This went with the true insider’s confidence that if anything did go hideously wrong somebody somewhere would always be around to sort things out for him. The first assumption was correct. And so, at enormous cost to all and sundry, was the second.

  Thoroughly infatuated by now with Leslie Holt, Boothby began to push his luck and for several weeks became a regular visitor at Cedra Court. I remember Violet Kray mentioning to me that Ron brought him several times to Vallance Road. ‘He was very nice and very fond of Ronnie. A real gentleman,’ was her reaction. Members of the Firm thought differently. For them, Boothby was an old fool who should have known better. Behind his back they started calling him ‘the Queen Mother’.

  It was around this time that Lord Beaverbrook’s old journalistic instincts got the better of him and, thinking that it might make an interesting story for the Express, sent Michael Thornton, one of his young reporters, round to Eaton Place to interview his old friend Boothby. ‘The Beaver’ should have known better, particularly as Michael Thornton was both young and good-looking. When Thornton telephoned the flat in Eaton Square, Lord Boothby answered. When Thornton mentioned Beaverbrook’s name he was invited round straight away and arrived to find Boothby considerably the worse for drink. With him was Leslie Holt who made it clear that he had just moved in with Boothby.

  Thanks presumably to the whisky, Boothby was absurdly indiscreet and when Holt had left the room, and Thornton inquired if Holt was an actor, Boothby answered, ‘No, dear boy, he’s a burglar and I’m in love with him.’ He went on to say that, following the example of his friend Tom Driberg and another gay burglar Teddy Smith, he sometimes encouraged Holt to burgle rich people he disliked while they were away on holiday.

  While Thornton was listening, fascinated by all this, a third person arrived who was also introduced. ‘Michael, this is an old friend of mine: meet Ronnie Kray.’

  For Thornton this was the beginning of what proved to be a nightmare evening. To start with Ron insisted on taking everybody out to dinner, and afterwards they all moved on to Esmeralda’s Barn. Thornton had done his best to leave by now, but Ron wouldn’t hear of it, and Boothby whispered to Thornton, ‘just play along with him,’ adding, ‘he’s not a man to offend’.

  Then, when Ron abruptly made it clear that he fancied Thornton, and Thornton made it just as clear that he wasn’t gay, an angry scene broke out. Boothby did his best to calm things down, but Ron was furious to be spurned and, but for Reg’s tactful intervention, Michael Thornton would have been seriously hurt. But, thereafter, Ron felt that he had been insulted and wanted his revenge, although it took more than a year for him to get it.

  Thornton had returned late one night to his small mews house in Marylebone and was just unlocking his front door when somebody he never saw attacked him from behind and beat him up so savagely that he later needed several stitches in his head. All he could remember afterwards was that, just before passing out, he heard someone saying, ‘that’ll teach you to show respect to Ronnie Kray in future’.

  This sort of close relationship between a famous and instantly recognisable public figure like Boothby and a criminal as notorious as Ron could hardly go unnoticed, and reports began to circulate between the local police and Scotland Yard about an inadvisable connection between the gangster and the peer. With blackmail and scandal – even physical harm – a possibility in this sort of situation, this was something the police could not ignore. Accordingly Detective Superintendent John Cummings, hea
d of Scotland Yard’s fledgling Intelligence Section, C11, was ordered to keep Boothby and the Krays under constant observation by plain-clothes officers. As a result, by the spring of 1964 a considerable dossier was building up at C11, not only concerning the sexual shenanigans at Cedra Court and who attended them but also about the more serious criminal activities of the Twins, including detailed information on their protection rackets, extortion, organised crime and major fraud.

  While this was going on his lordship was still blithely unconcerned by the interest he was arousing. He might also have been getting dangerous advice from his friend Tom Driberg. According to Superintendent Cummings, whenever Driberg was arrested – as he was with ridiculous regularity for soliciting, or ‘cottaging’ as it was called, in public lavatories – he always made a point of complaining directly to the Home Secretary in person of ‘harassment’ by the police. This would usually result in proceedings being dropped. If they weren’t, Driberg was not above begging his friend and employer Lord Beaverbrook to use his influence. At first Beaverbrook had been prepared to tolerate Tom’s escapades, but he was starting to become impatient. ‘Tom, how many times do I have to save you from arrest? It can’t go on’ he used to say.

  Lord Beaverbrook was about to be proved right. The time had come when even he would be unable to save his star columnist from trouble, now that he was going on the prowl with a TV celebrity as notorious and recognisable as Boothby. By early summer 1964, C11’s work was almost done and Scotland Yard was on the point of launching a major offensive against the Krays. Had this occurred at this stage in their career it would have been the end of them and their threat for ever, together with the reputations and careers of Lord Boothby and Tom Driberg. This would certainly have happened but for Norman Lucas.