Tag Archives: London

Television – The Gold

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We gobbled up The Gold. The series (six episodes) is on BBC iPlayer, and still showing every Sunday on BBC One.

It’s about the armed robbery of the Brinks-Mat warehouse at Heathrow, London, in November 1983. There were six men in the gang who carried out the heist, all of them from south London. Apparently they were hoping to find about £3m in cash, but instead they discovered £27m in gold, and were quite happy to take it. Then they had the massive problem of what to do with it – how to get rid of it without anyone noticing.

I found it fascinating. Completely 1980s. The police investigation was blind without CCTV, and had to operate a tiny follow up force to get around the corruption in its own members, and the sticky network of freemasons.

Worth a watch if you can find it. It’s fiction, but based on real events. Like Ferrante’s tales from Naples, Italy, there are women caught up in the crimes, and characters stuck in poverty, or recently released from it.

The Gold had me gripped. It’s got a great cast. And it’s changed my view of London.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

2020 – something to try at home

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London during the spring lockdown of 2020

Hello out there (or in there),

I hope that wherever you are, all is as well as possible with you and your families.

My apologies for the long silence from The Phraser. My excuse is that I’m trying to write a novel. When I set off with this grand, novel-writing plan, I did not realise how difficult it would be. There has been some progress, but I’m still not sure in which direction.

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London Unmasked

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London – during lockdown 2020

Four months of lockdown is a long time.

The door has opened slowly over the last few weeks but life still feels strangely slow motion, especially here in the City of London.

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