The next season of British TV's favourite gangsters is almost upon us.
Fans are waiting with bated breath for the new episodes of Peaky Blinders .
The upcoming run will be set after the 1929 financial crash and explore the effects of this on gangster and politician Tommy Shelby ( Cillian Murphy ), while the rest of the Shelby clan grapple with the changing times.
One figure set to play a major part in the fifth season is new character Oswald Mosley .
Like other series characters Winston Churchill and Jessie Eden, however, Mosley has a basis in a real-life figure.
Peaky Blinders season 5: Who is Oswald Mosley?
In Peaky Blinders, Oswald Mosley is a politician and baronet who is a rising star of the Labour Party in 1929.
He will cross paths with fellow rising politician Tommy Shelby, who is now a Labour MP himself following the end of season 4, but will they be fast friends or deadly enemies?
The season 5 description teased a politician coming to Tommy with an offer that will change his family and the country forever, so it looks like Mosley will be the one to do it.
This isn't going to end well.
Who was the real Oswald Mosley?
The real Sir Oswald Mosley was a British politician and baronet who rose to prominence in the 1920s as a Member of Parliament.
Initially a member for the Conservative Party from 1918, Mosley went independent, before eventually being elected as a Labour MP in 1926 and serving as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929 to 1931.
Despite hopes of being a Prime Minister, he resigned from the party due to differences with the leadership and founded the New Party.
The New Party later became the British Union of Fascists in 1932, with Mosley garnering support from newspaper publisher Viscount Rothermere and visiting fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Italy in 1936.
Mosley was eventually put in prison in 1940 and the far-right party banned in the UK.
After his release in 1943, Mosley was widely condemned due to his fascist ties and spent the majority of his time in Paris, France.
He died in 1980 in Orsay, France, at the age of 84.
Who plays Oswald Mosley in Peaky Blinders?
Oswald Molsley is portrayed in season five of Peaky Blinders by British actor Sam Claflin.
Claflin is best known for his roles as Finnick Odair in the Hunger Games series, as Philip Swift in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and as Will Traynor in romantic drama Me Before You alongside Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke.
He also appeared in the survival drama Adrift with Shailene Woodley and Daphne Du Maurier costume drama My Cousin Rachel alongside Rachel Weisz.
Claflin has a role in the new Charlie's Angels reboot, which is released later this year.
Claflin previously spoke of his love of Peaky to Blinders to A list: "I’m the biggest fan boy.
"Genuinely when I got to set and heard Cillian start talking as Tommy Shelby I started fangirling a little bit.
"The director had to go ‘Sam, bring it down, bring it down’."
Peaky Blinders season 5 is released later in 2019 .
