Director de los Libros published the definitive account that reshapes how the public views the Peaky Blinders saga. The sixth and final season of the BBC Two drama, led by the Peaky Blinders star, premieres today on Netflix and invites a closer look at the real story behind the fictional world.
The work by novelist and historian Carl Chin, titled “Peaky Blinders: The True Story”, traces the history of the infamous Birmingham gang that has since become a global phenomenon. The book chronicles a period when criminal networks braided themselves into the fabric of British towns, influencing illegal ventures and shaping local reputations. The narrative has earned recognition across the arts and media landscape, with awards acknowledging its insightful portrayal of a turbulent era.
Carl Chinn, once a professor of local history at the University of Birmingham until 2015, is the great-grandson of a Peaky Blinders member named Edward Derrick. In 2002, his longstanding service to local history earned him a royal accolade from Queen Elizabeth II, who appointed him to the Order of the British Empire. This lineage informs the book’s aim to separate myth from fact and to present a measured, evidence-based portrait of a gang whose name has become a byword for danger and charisma in popular culture.
The true story unfolds with a clear focus on Billy Kimber, a shrewd figure who led Britain’s most notorious gang in a period of rapid social change. The Peaky Blinders, notorious for running illicit enterprises including illegal betting and horse racing wagering, built a reputation that spread beyond Birmingham to other industrial towns. In the modern era, the saga is closely associated with a stylish, even glamorous veneer of violence, yet the original narrative asks who the real players were, and what drove their world into the limelight.
After decades of meticulous research, historian Carl Chinn draws on unpublished materials and interviews with the descendants of the gang’s members. The exploration covers a time when the British Empire was at a crossroads and the city’s working class faced the pressures of modernization and global conflict. The work situates the Peaky Blinders within the broader social history of England, offering readers a grounded, humanized view of those who lived through extraordinary circumstances. The accounts weave together archival sources, personal testimonies, and historical context to illuminate the forces that shaped a notorious mafia ecosystem in a rapidly changing Britain.
These are the Peaky Blinders and this is their true story, told with a historian’s rigor and a storyteller’s eye for human detail. The result is a compelling portrait of a group whose influence extended far beyond the streets of Birmingham, touching politics, law enforcement, and everyday life in the early 20th century. The narrative invites readers to reexamine the legends that surround the gang and to understand the social conditions that made such a movement possible.