The thoughts on freedom were only momentary but so powerful that they seem to tear my soul apart. There is something about being alone in a cell, about the inability to rise from a chair, open a door and speak to someone.
I would like to get up this minute and discuss this subject with someone. I would like to put these feelings into a piece of sculpture and although sitting typing out the feelings is important there is a tremendous amount of strain and frustration attached to it. During these periods I find it hard to read a book or watch TV, which I hardly do anyway. The only solution is to tackle the mood and try to do something about it. Jimmy Boyle is a Scottish former gangster and convicted murderer who became a sculptor and novelist after his release from prison.
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. He wrote an autobiography, A Sense of Freedom , which was later turned into a film of the same name. In , Trevelyan wrote Freedom Found , a book about her year marriage to Boyle.
Upon his release from prison on 26 October , he moved to Edinburgh to continue his artistic career. A charitable organisation offering art therapy workshops to recovering drug addicts and ex-convicts. Though the project secured funding from private sources including actor Sean Connery, comedian Billy Connolly and John Paul Getty , it lasted only a few years.
In , his son James, a drug addict, was murdered in the Oatlands neighbourhood of Glasgow. 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.
