Bronson
by Charles Bronson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles BronsonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-05-01
ISBN: 1844546551
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: John Blake
Book Reviews of Bronson
Book Review: Someone incredibly human!
Summary: 5 Stars
In everyone's life there are journeys we take, both external and internal. No matter who we are, we can usually, on some level, relate to the roads others have taken. When we meet people, read a true story, or view a life tale on film, we find that inner place in ourselves and it evokes emotion...happiness, sadness, joy, sorrow, pain, pleasure, love, hate etc. Some of our fellow life travellers have extraordinary journeys, some lived, in few brief hours or days, that which eventually determines their existence. Others have what can truly be only described as odysseys. This is one such heroic journey...heroic because it takes a hero to go through so much internal agony, such physical and mental torture and come out the other side a decent human being!
Charles Bronson is the adopted fighting name of Michael Peterson, Britain's most dangerous inmate. He has written the epic story of his journey. Here is a man who has been incarcerated for over three decades, most of which have been in solitary confinement, who has taken hostages, held prisons in a state of panic while he strides the rooftops and screams obsenities at the screws below. Charlie has been commited to mental institutions and yet still declared sane three times.
On reading his story you will perhaps understand why I can hear his accent in his words, the way he speaks naturally without affectation, from the heart, from the soul! Charlie tells of trying to kill a pedophile and a murderer and hearing himself laugh as the guards pry him off. He has never managed to actually end anyone's life, thank God. Charlie relates his story without self pity or apology. He speaks of crying, naked in his cell because his latest outburst cancelled the visit with his family, they having come so far to see him and he having waited so long for some personal contact. It is a mental picture that can not be easily forgotten, this huge bear of a man in tears because he has let his beloved mother down one more time, upset his family yet again. Nor is it easy to put aside the days and weeks, even years holed-up in what can only be described as a dungeon the Spanish Inquisition would be ashamed of! Treatment that Charlie and men like him have had to endure is the worst medieval minds could conjure. Yet here we are in this day and age!
"Life was becoming a battle! There was contempt in the air. Hate had set in and bitterness was eating me away." Charlie's words echo around the brain like the hollow curses and screams of prisoners along the cold, hard prison walls. What becomes of a young misguided soul when housed with the dregs of humanity? Where does the mind go when faced with daily confrontations with the perverse, the insane, the cruel, the authority that does not listen, does not care and sees only the behaviour and not the human being? Every punch, every threat, every maliferous scream is an agonising cry for help!
Charlie admits his faults and unlike so many accepts the responsibility he has for his situation. However, he is miraculously able to look at it all from a bird's point of view. That perhaps is a gift from being so alone and isolated for so long. Like all abuse victims who survive, he has managed to separate himself from what has gone on in the past and see it from the "other's" perspective. What is one of the most amazing things about his story is, the matter-of-fact way in which Mr. Bronson tells painfully, among other things, of losing his wife and son because of his incapacity not to fight, not to cause trouble, not to comform. If ever a human being were created not to conform, it is Charlie!
There is the other side of Charlie, the side that works for and loves children, who longs to be outside speaking to kids and telling them to keep straight and not make the wrong decsions like he has. This man has the love of family and a special relationship with his cousin Lorraine who has been a rock for him all these years. There are friends from the inside, some famous names of major notoriety, some friends from celebrity and nobility......this is not an ordinary man...Charlie is unique...they broke the mould...Charlie may well say "...just as well they did!" I took a liberty there Charlie : ) It is hard not to appreciate this enigma of a man. No matter what his faults and he has many like all of us, Charlie is a good soul.
In epilogue he writes "Will I have the life sucked out of me? Will I be left as just an empty shell?"....he writes a page more and as he always does he picks his spirits up off the floor, polishes them off in timely order and ends with..."I'll prove them wrong again. Sooner or later I'm coming home. I am the ultimate survivor." Yes, you are Charlie! God bless : )
In the end there is something incredibly human about Charlie!
I bought Mr. B's books after seeing the extraordinary movie "Bronson" about his journey. Some movies, some stories, some people just touch you in a way you never imagined, that is Charlie's gift to me personally. Thanks Mr. B.
From my movie review of "Bronson"...."Trying to define the man who calls himself Charles Bronson would be a mistake. The man, the myth, the misunderstandings, the manic attempts to disentangle from the penal establishment... The movie "Bronson" achieves what can only be described as a visual feast of an epic life of monumental disparities." Watch it. It is eye-opening in so many ways!
For those who truly care, maybe you would sign his petition freebronson.co.uk
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