A collection of 200 letters written by notorious gangster Reggie Kray while in Maidstone Prison will be listed online after failing to meet its reserve at auction.

The rare items were up for sale at McTear's, Glasgow, yesterday with an estimated value of up to £15,000.

Bidding on the letters will now start today at www.gallery1842.com and is expected to last two weeks.

Kray died in August 2000, just eight weeks after being released from another prison, suffering from cancer.

Reggie and his twin brother Ronnie were once the infamous crime lords of London’s East End involved in armed robberies, arson, protection rackets and violent assaults, including the torture and the murders of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVite and George Cornell. They were jailed for life in 1969.

Ronnie, a diagnosed schizophrenic, died of a heart attack behind bars in March 1995.

Reggie’s letters will go under the hammer in Glasgow as lot 800 at McTear’s auction house with a guide price starting at £10,000.

They comprise the complete correspondence - spanning 1988 to 1993 - between his ghost writer of his biography Carol Clerk in preparation for the book Born Fighter.

In an interview given to the Independent while in Maidstone prison Reggie said: “I have no regrets, my brother didn’t have any either. I have learnt over the years, as did Ron, that there are many people worse off than us.

“A lot of people have no choice but we did.”

The sale follows swiftly after the demolition of a Maidstone hotel said to have had a connection with the Krays.

The Russell Hotel, in Boxley Road, made way for the development of 14 houses. It is understood the twins bought the hotel from its then owner, Don Verrell in 1978 and that their mother Violet later stayed in it while visiting Reggie in Maidstone Prison.