Jimmy Boyle

James Boyle is a Scottish former gangster and convicted murderer who became a sculptor and novelist after his release from prison.

In 1967, Boyle was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of another gangland figure, William "Babs" Rooney. He served fourteen years before his release in 1980. Boyle has always denied killing Rooney but has acknowledged having been a violent and sometimes ruthless moneylender from the Gorbals, one of the roughest and most deprived areas of Glasgow. During his incarceration in the special unit of Barlinnie Prison, he turned to art and wrote an autobiography, A Sense of Freedom (1977), which was later turned into a film of the same name.

Boyle has 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 Rêve des Condamnés (The Anger and Dreams of the Condemned), and won the best documentary prize at the Fifa Montreal awards in 2002. He also wrote a novel, A Stolen Smile, which is about the theft of the Mona Lisa and how it ends up hidden on a Scottish housing scheme.