Gentleman Thief: The Recollections of a Cat Burglar [Hardcover]

I bought this book for my Dad as he believed he had met Peter Scott on holiday. As it turned out he hadn't met THIS Peter Scott, but having read the book, he now wishes he had! I subsequently read it and found it to be one of the most unbelievable stories I have ever read. From being a big time thief who mixed with the highest celebrities of the day to a man down his luck. This man must pinch himself from time to time just to see if his life hasn't been one long dream - or, at times, a nightmare.

The autobiographist was one of the leading "non-violent" criminals of his era. I was particularly interested to read this, having lived for years in the area where he spent a lot of time, lived for part of his life, socialized and played tennis: Little Venice and Maida Vale. Although I am not a tennis player, I used to all but live in Raoul's Cafe, which he mentions several times. He was, it seems, an habitue of the tiny Windsor Castle pub, which I occasionally used despite its local repuation as "the gangster pub" (never any trouble, but sometimes VERY expensive motors parked out front...) and he seems to have been enamoured in some way with Sheila, the VERY formidable landlady, who ruled over her lovely little stable of pretty barmaids with what seemed to be a rod of iron. Well, who am I to say? Scott (real name Gulston) obviously knew the place better than a mere local resident like me...and he uses her full name. But I cannot recall having noticed him around. Why would I, though? Although he says he had tanned looks and was "flash", that could cover half the chancers and posers in Maida Vale lol!

As to his life, he was born in Belfast of middle class stock, though the family had a religious extremism rare even in that gloomy part of the world: Plymouth Brethren (like the family of Aleister Crowley). He started burgling while a teenager and got away with about 150, until locked up at Crumlin Road Prison. Burgling somehow grew alongside his sexualization and he seems to have had a lot of erotic feelings mixed up with the larcenous ones.

Later, in London, he specialized in crossing roofs and climbing drainpipes to loot furs in bulk as well as the jewels of the rich and famous, Sophia Loren among them. He did quite a few years in prison and seems to have spent a fortune on gambling and other transient pleasures. Like Morris ("Morry the Head") Spurling (cf. A Diamond Fell Into My Pocket), gaming seems to have taken a serious toll of his profits. And, interestingly, Spurling's oft-times accomplice, Brian "The Swan" Kutner, was on occasion a partner in crime of Scott.

Scott cannot seem to keep from referring to religion, in particular to the repentant and unrepentant thieves at the Crucifixion. His Northern Irish Protestant genetics coming out? He obviously does have a serious interest in religion and comes across as not entirely "bad". Indeed, he is at pains to point out his character flaws himself. At any rate, after the mid-90's, he lived in "retirement" in an Islington council flat off the dole, handouts from friends, occasional casual or tennis-hitting work. He was convicted in 1998 at Snaresbrook Crown Court of handling a stolen Picasso and received three and a half years imprisonment. He was in the newspapers in 2004 with comments on the Old Bailey's centenary and was still around, commenting for the press on crimes, in 2007.

Scott, in writing this book, would have done better to write it purely chronologically and in the first person, not in flashbacks and in the third. He says it was to protect himself, but that is transparent. I think it was simply Peter Scott alias Gulston, being too clever by half...a good read, though, despite its flaws.

I have enjoyed this book and provided a critique for the version with a somewhat different cover.....

The main purpose of my renewed comment is to advise that Peter Scott aka Peter Craig Gulston died on the 17th March 2013 aged 82 and his obituary appears in The Times ( 25/3/2013 )

He had declared himself Bankrupt and in recent years lived on Benefits in a Council Flat in Islington, riding a bicycle, working as a tennis coach and tending the flowers in the garden of his local Church.