Charles Bronson who was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for armed robbery in 1974. His sentence has been extended several times for violent behaviour and he was jailed for life earlier in 2000 after taking an education officer at Hull prison hostage. This programme looks at the history of Charles Bronson, considered one of Britain’s most brutal criminals.

In 1974 he was imprisoned for a robbery and sentenced to seven years. While in prison he began making a name for himself as a loose cannon, often fighting convicts and prison guards. These fights added years onto his sentence. Regarded as a problem prisoner, he was moved 120 times throughout Her Majesty’s Prison Service and spent most of that time in solitary confinement. What was originally a seven year term stretched out to a fourteen year sentence that resulted in his first wife, Irene, with whom he had a son, leaving him. He was released on 30 October 1988 but only spent sixty-nine days as a free man before he was arrested again.