The Great Train Robbery

Summary

Dan Snow's History Hit Episode Summary: "The Great Train Robbery"

In this riveting episode of Dan Snow's History Hit, host Dan Snow delves deep into one of Britain's most infamous heists: The Great Train Robbery of 1963. Featuring insightful discussions with seasoned journalists Colin McKenzie and Nick Russell Pavia, the episode unpacks the meticulous planning, audacious execution, and enduring legacy of this legendary crime.

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1. Introduction to the Great Train Robbery

The episode opens with a detailed recounting of the events leading up to and including the Great Train Robbery. Colin McKenzie sets the stage by describing the setting:

Colin McKenzie [08:15]: "It's 2.45am the early morning of 8 August 1963. A Royal Mail train speeds down the west coast mainline through the flat, open countryside of Buckinghamshire, just north of London."

This introduction emphasizes the significance of the heist, highlighting the transportation of £2.6 million (equivalent to approximately £50 million today) in cash, making it "the heist of the century."

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2. Planning and Prelude to the Robbery

Colin McKenzie elaborates on the origins and planning behind the robbery, noting the diverse backgrounds of the robbers:

Colin McKenzie [08:15]: "They were all a loose association of criminals in South London. They'd love you to believe that or they would have done [as an elite team]."

The gang, including notable figures like Bruce Reynolds and Ronnie Biggs, previously executed a smaller-scale robbery at London Airport in 1962, siphoning £62,000 from BOAC's cash wages. This prior experience laid the groundwork for the more ambitious train heist.

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3. Execution of the Heist

The meticulous execution of the robbery is recounted with gripping detail:

Colin McKenzie [21:27]: "The best moment, which really alerted me to this idea, is this story actually not quite what we've been told... this guy's just talking to him. It's like a time machine. You're in that moment with those people, and what you've realized has just happened to them has been absolutely terrifying."

The robbers halted the train by encountering a red signal, quickly overpowering the crew and isolating the third carriage, which contained the bulk of the cash. The swift takeover lasted merely 30 minutes, during which they commandeered the money and fled to a rural farmhouse—a decision that would later prove to be their undoing.

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4. Aftermath and Mistakes

Post-heist, the gang's choice of hideout introduced critical vulnerabilities:

Colin McKenzie [07:04]: "The farmhouse is an aberration in terms of the planning. It really was a very stupid thing to have done."

By congregating at the farmhouse, the robbers failed to maintain a low profile. David Whitby, a key crew member, inadvertently exposed their location by observing an army-style lorry, prompting the police to initiate a widespread manhunt.

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5. Police Investigation and Manhunt

The police response, led by figures like General MacArthur, was both strategic and relentless:

Colin McKenzie [22:01]: "The seeds, if you like, of the great, great train robbery story is Buckinghamshire police completely confounded by this extraordinary crime..."

Leveraging informants ("grasses") and forensic evidence such as fingerprints found at the farmhouse, Scotland Yard's Flying Squad systematically traced and apprehended the robbers over the ensuing months.

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6. Public Reception and The Trial

The Great Train Robbery captivated the British public, with media coverage turning the trial into a sensational spectacle:

Colin McKenzie [32:52]: "It was at the time the biggest criminal trial in British history. It was huge. And it did involve the majority of the people who were involved in the robbery."

The trial, conducted in a specially constructed courtroom in Aylesbury, saw extensive media presence, premature public identification of suspects, and widespread public fascination, further embedding the robbery into British cultural lore.

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7. The Ronnie Biggs Phenomenon

While Ronnie Biggs played a minor role in the actual robbery, his subsequent escapades solidified his place in history. The episode details his infamous escape from Wandsworth Prison in 1965 and his years on the run:

Nick Russell Pavia [39:15]: "Tell me about Ronnie Biggs. Why does he loom so large in our memory? Because I've learned that he wasn't even very significant in the actual robbery itself."

Biggs' charisma, subsequent media appearances, and prolonged fugitive life in Brazil made him the poster boy of the Great Train Robbery, overshadowing many of his more culpable accomplices.

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8. Capture and Legacy

Nick Russell Pavia narrates his journalistic journey to uncover Biggs' whereabouts in Brazil, culminating in Biggs' eventual capture and return to the UK:

Nick Russell Pavia [53:34]: "Nick, I'm really surprised, really surprised that the real beneficiaries of the Great Train Robbery were a bunch of London lawyers."

Biggs' trial, media portrayal, and eventual pardon ("sympathy release") highlight the enduring fascination and mythos surrounding the Great Train Robbery. His funeral in 2013, attended by hundreds, underscores his transformation from criminal to cultural icon.

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9. Conclusion: Myth versus Reality

The episode concludes by acknowledging the blurred lines between fact and fiction in the Great Train Robbery's narrative:

Colin McKenzie [37:37]: "As John Williams wrote, our fascination with the Great Train Robbery shows no sign of fading. It's Britain's real-life Wizard of Oz."

Through meticulous research and firsthand accounts, Colin McKenzie and Nick Russell Pavia peel back layers of media sensationalism to present a nuanced understanding of the crime, its participants, and its lasting impact on British society.

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Notable Quotes:

• Colin McKenzie [07:04]: "The farmhouse is an aberration in terms of the planning. It really was a very stupid thing to have done."
• Nick Russell Pavia [39:15]: "Tell me about Ronnie Biggs. Why does he loom so large in our memory? Because I've learned that he wasn't even very significant in the actual robbery itself."
• Colin McKenzie [32:52]: "It was at the time the biggest criminal trial in British history. It was huge. And it did involve the majority of the people who were involved in the robbery."
• Nick Russell Pavia [53:34]: "Nick, I'm really surprised, really surprised that the real beneficiaries of the Great Train Robbery were a bunch of London lawyers."

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This episode serves as a compelling exploration of The Great Train Robbery, unraveling the complexities of the crime, the flawed planning of its perpetrators, and the charismatic yet ultimately tragic figure of Ronnie Biggs. For history enthusiasts eager to understand how a single event can captivate a nation and spawn enduring legends, this episode is a must-listen.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

Hello folks.

[Colin McKenzie]

Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live.

[Dan Snow]

Recording of the podcast in London in.

[Colin McKenzie]

England on 12th September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it, get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there.

[BetterHelp]

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[Tom Newton Dunn]

I'm Tom Newton Dunn from the General and the Journalist. If you like history hit we think you'll love our new podcasts from the Times and the Sunday Times. Hearing history in the making today discussed each week with me, the Journalist and General Sir Patrick Sanders.

[Colin McKenzie]

The old global order's breaking down, conflict's on the rise and the world is getting ever more dangerous.

[Tom Newton Dunn]

Join us as we try to make sense of an ever more dangerous world, the general and the journalist, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Colin McKenzie]

It's 2.45am the early morning of 8 August 1963. A Royal Mail train speeds down the west coast mainline through the flat, open countryside of Buckinghamshire, just north of London. It's heading to the capital from Glasgow. At this time of day, it isn't just carrying letters and packages, it's carrying bags of money. In 1963, almost all transactions are still done in cash, so naturally that cash had to be transported from one bank to another. And as on every cash carrying mail train, it was held in the third carriage. As well as cash, there are postal workers sifting and sorting the mail. On this train there are 70 postal workers aboard. At 3am the train approaches the Sears crossing between Leighton Buzzard and and Cheddington. Usually the train gets a straight run through, but this time the driver, Jack Mills, sees a red signal up ahead. Obeying the signal, he applies the brake and the train grinds to a standstill. A red signal is unusual, but not unheard of. There have been maintenance works on the line here, so a second crew member, a 26 year old called David Whitby, climbs down from the cab to call the signalman from a telephone beside the tracks. To his surprise, he finds the phone is out of service. The cables have been cut. He then sees Someone with a bib and braces looking between the carriages.

[Nick Russell Pavia]

Hello.

[Colin McKenzie]

He shouts to him, believing he's a railway worker. The man beckons David over and he obliges. But as he approaches the man, a group of others leap out of the darkness and bundle David down the embankment, telling him that they'll kill him if he makes any noise. Back on the train, the quiet is broken by the sound of footsteps. Driver Jack Mills thinks they belong to his colleague David Whitby, but it's not him. It's a man in a balaclava who grapples with Jack at the door of the cabin. During the altercation, another man comes up behind Jack and strikes him over the head with an iron bar. He crumples semi conscious. Robbers now have control of the train and they now have to move it to Bredago Bridge, half a mile further along the track where they plan to unload the vast amount of money being transported on the train. They decouple the third carriage from those following it, which hold the regular mail and the 70 postal workers and shunt the front of the train, including, including that all important third carriage holding the money to the bridge. On that high value package third carriage, other gang members take on the remaining postal workers inside. In the same way they deal with Jack the driver, a violent cosh over the head. They are made to lie face down on the floor in the corner of the carriage. By this point, Jack and his colleague David Whitby of also brought in, handcuffed together and pushed down by the others. Next, the gang form a human chain, offloading all but eight of the 128 sacks of money from the carriage onto waiting trucks. They drive off with 2.6 million pounds, around 50 million in today's money, from boarding the train to getting away. The whole thing has lasted just 30 minutes. The story goes that when they arrived at their safe house, they play Monopoly with the spoils. It's been dubbed the heist of the century. But the story doesn't end there. In fact, the robbery itself was just the beginning. What happened in the decades after Most Wanted Men on the Run, the jailbreak, the betrayals, the fake identities, the surreptitious flights to Latin America and the manhunt across continents. That is the story that's gripped the public, movie makers and authors for decades. But is the story we know about the Great Train Robbery and its perpetrators the likes of Ronnie Biggs and Bruce Reynolds who catapulted to stardom? Is it true these guys created a media storm around themselves, selling their version of the story, making the most of bidding wars between British tabloids. And we know those who write the best stories get to tell the. So to get the truth and unravel the real events of the Great Train Robbery, I'm joined by two journalists who know the story inside out.

[Dan Snow]

Nick Russell Pavia is a longtime producer.

[Colin McKenzie]

For the BBC who wrote the Great Train Robbery Crime of the Century. Having undertaken years of painstaking research, he knows just about every tiny detail the robbery and says they might have pulled off the heist itself, but their lack of planning for the aftermath was their downfall and a common pattern in audacious heists like this.

The farmhouse is an aberration in terms of the planning. It really was a very stupid thing to have done. They could have all been back in marble arch in 45 minutes from that. They could have all been home in bed within an hour. If they'd just stashed the money, carried on behaving normally, they'd never have been caught.

I'm also joined by Colin McKenzie. His incredible career as a Fleet street journalist has seen him grill Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon and Elizabeth Taylor. He secured one of the scoops of the century when he tracked down Ronnie Biggs in Brazil who'd escaped from Wandsworth Prison in July 1965 while serving time for the Great Train Robbery and was enjoying the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. As a minor celebrity and fugitive on.

[Nick Russell Pavia]

The run, he had to become a tourist trap. Signed books, signed autographs. I don't think many of his colleagues on the robbery would have been able to learn fluent Portuguese and survive as he did on the run for nine or 10 years.

[Colin McKenzie]

This is Dan Snow's history. Hit the place that brings the most astonishing stories from history to life. So mind the closing doors. This is the Great Train Robbery.

[Dan Snow]

Nick, give me a little insight. Who were these men? Where are they from?

[Colin McKenzie]

That's a big question, Dan. I mean, there's quite a few of them. There's Bruce Reynolds, Gordon Goody, Charlie Wilson, Buster Edwards. There's a whole bunch of people, 16 of them. They were all a loose association of criminals in South London.

[Dan Snow]

When you say loose association, have they worked together before? Or is this kind of an Ocean's Eleven elite team who spend all their time knocking off big targets?

[Colin McKenzie]

They'd love you to believe that or they would have done. In their day, they had some track record, both working together and as individuals. None of them were, you know, Ocean's Eleven standard criminals, really. They had done quite an impressive robbery, some of them together the previous year. At London Airport, where they'd managed to snatch the entire cash wages of BOAC from Comet House. £62,000 in 1962 money.

[Dan Snow]

Wow. So they were, I believe we'd call them hardened career criminals these days.

[Colin McKenzie]

Well, yeah, I mean, before the Great Train Robbery, just to put Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind, who he isn't, into perspective, the last charge that he went to court on before the Great Train Robbery was for poaching. If you read Bruce Reynolds biography, and I spent a lot of time with Bruce, you will realise he is the mastermind of his own reputation.

[Dan Snow]

That's brilliant. And were they all London boys? Did they have military backgrounds? Is there anything else, perhaps, that links them?

[Colin McKenzie]

Firstly, yes, the core bunch which kicked this thing off were all sort of Bastie boys. They came from South London. They latterly enticed some other people to join them because they had some expertise with stopping trains and robbing trains. But the core group that began to sort of get this plan together, such as there was, they all came from South London and they were both poor and had not really gone very far out into the world. You know, their horizons were fairly limited. And that is partly why the planning of the crime. For example, having a country farmhouse as a hideout was such a catastrophic mistake. Because being Battersea boys, they thought, there aren't many people around in the country, so nobody will notice us. But what they didn't realise, I mean, I live in the country, I've only got to go down the road in a new pair of shoes or a new coat and all the neighbors are talking about it. You can't get away with anything in the country.

[Dan Snow]

Fatal, nosy neighbors in the countryside, people like me, twitching curtains everywhere. What was Britain like at the time? Maybe a stupid question. Was it easier to commit these enormous crimes of ambition in that era? Was policing different? Was CCTV detection different back then?

[Colin McKenzie]

All those things are true, I think, you know, to look at it in the context of those post war years, there was a massive crime wave all the way through the 50s into the early 60s. It's quite common after the war and it possibly came out of the back of the ordinary, everyday people, respectable people like you and I, Dan, broke the law on a daily basis with the black market during the war. So, you know, lines were a bit blurred. And children, particularly like these guys, they were all adolescents in the war. Their boundaries and their sense of right and wrong were possibly not quite as clear cut as they might have been had they been born in peacetime or had they been brought up in peacetime. So there was that aspect to it. There was a sense of lawlessness, people coming back and having fought and suffered, even people who hadn't fought in the war. Life was very precarious, you know. And I think, you know, we all went through this a little bit with the pandemic, you know, when everything, you know, and everything's familiar begins to sort of be uncertain. It really is a quite a shattering experience. And you do face the situation that, you know, tomorrow. Things that, you know, might not be the same and people you love may no longer be there. And it puts people into a different space, I think. And I think one sort of has to see where these people have come from, their trajectory, which gives you a handle on what was going on. And there was a lot of young men looking at crime as being an option. It was quite glamorized. They could go around in sharp suits. And Bruce Reynolds had his suits made in Savile. Rowan thought he was, you know, had arrived and all the rest of it. I think part of that is the part of history which social history. There was a sense of aspiration. People were looking at American films, at a classless society. They were listening to American music. That wasn't the way Britain was. That wasn't the world of their parents. But they wanted their life to be different. As Tommy Whisby, one of the Great Train Robbers, said, I didn't want to be like my dad and end up just as poor at the end of my life as I was at the beginning. And there was a sense, looking at these American movies, the kind of can do, optimistic culture of America. People had this aspiration. They wanted their lives to be more like that.

[Dan Snow]

How big was. I mean, you mentioned that job they pulled off the year before. Was this a big one?

[Colin McKenzie]

No, this was coming together of various ideas and there was this sense of theater about it. They all dressed up in pinstripe suits and waited in Comet House, which was BAC headquarters, in order to intercept two security guards bringing in this steel box with all the cash wages in. So it was a little bit like a kind of 60s film, like a League of Gentlemen type of thing or something, where there was quite a sense of theatre and concept about things. It wasn't just a smash and grab raid where they were worried in the stockings over their heads.

[Dan Snow]

But what about the train robbery? I mean, how ambitious was this one?

[Colin McKenzie]

It was very ambitious. And one of the great failings of it is possibly it was a bit too ambitious for their experience and their outlook. And I Mean, these guys had grown up in a very poor environment. Money to them. And I think this is an important part of understanding what was going on in their minds. They didn't have enough money to get to the end of the week, most weeks. And that was the way life was for them and everybody that they knew. What would it be like to have more money than you could possibly need to last you a lifetime? Even that to them would be the solution to everything. That to them would be, as Bruce Reynolds says, El Dorado. It would be the absolute kind of pinnacle of achievement. What they didn't realize, because they had no concept of is when you have more money than you need for today, or more money than you need to last you to the end of the week, what do you do with it? Even if it was legitimate money, they had no concept of how you could handle large amounts of money and make.

[Nick Russell Pavia]

It work for you.

[Colin McKenzie]

And this was a massive failing in their understanding as well as the fact that they didn't understand. I mean, if you and I were planning a crime, I think the first thing I'd be thinking about is how am I going to get away with it? They didn't have alibis, none of them. They basically had a very limited thing. All they could think about is getting hold of that money. When they got hold of that money, life would be sweet. And that's the beginning and end of their ambition.

[Dan Snow]

How did they choose this particular target?

[Colin McKenzie]

Well, in the previous year, this 1962 London Airport robbery, Gordon Goody, who was one of the train robbers, was also involved in that. And he, in an ID parade, got picked out by one of the guards, even though at the time he was wearing. He dyed his hair black and he was wearing a false moustache. He got picked out rather unluckily by one of the security guards and ended up in court anyway. The solicitors representing him, Weeter and Company, the solicitors clerk, there was an interesting character. One of the things he did as well as being a solicitor's clerk was to broker information and sort of matchmake criminals, which was the sideline, which was more lucrative than being a solicitor's clerk. And he and Gordon got along really well. And when they were in court, Brian Field came up with this idea that he would exchange the hat that Gordon was allegedly had been wearing during the robbery for one that was several sizes bigger. So when in court, Gordon was asked to put on the hat in order to be identified. The hat sort of fell over his eyes and of course it then undermined the entire identity parade on which he'd been obliged to take part. And that was the beginning of him getting off on the charge, thanks to Brian Fields. So this solicitor's clerk gave him a call one day sometime later and said he'd got some information that he might be interested in. And he arranged for Gordon to meet a guy in Finsbury park who claimed to be connected with somebody who worked for British Railways, as it was then called, and worked on Post Office trains. And then unfolded this astonishing thing to Gordon that there were these trains going up and down the country on a nightly basis carrying millions of pounds in cash. So that was the basis on which he was presented with this extraordinary opportunity. It is extraordinary that no criminals have thought of robbing these mail trains before.

[Dan Snow]

Was there lots of preparation involved?

[Colin McKenzie]

There was. I mean, it's a little bit more complicated than the usual smash and grab thing. You know, you've got a train traveling down a track in the middle of the night. How do you stop it? Where do you stop it? Then they came across this idea that they would have to stop it. And then they've got these other carriages which are sorting carriages, where they're sorting letters and parcels with 70 mail train workers. So they're never going to be able to overpower all those guys. What they did discover fairly early on is the carriage that held all the money that's being transported, this money belonged to banks. It was always the third carriage on the train. So two things came together. Firstly, where they could stop the train wasn't quite where they could unload it. They needed to move it down to a bridge 1100 yards further down the track. Secondly, if they uncoupled the third carriage from the rest of the train, they'd leave these 70 guys behind so they wouldn't have to deal with them. So those are the two, if you like, important pivotal moments where they kind of thought this plan could work.

[Dan Snow]

And they assemble, not the most crack of teams, but they do assemble people with the right skills. They bring a few people in.

[Colin McKenzie]

They do. There was a bunch of people who were christened by the press, the South Coast Raiders. They'd been robbing trains on the South Coast Line, the London to Brighton line, in a very modest way, but quite successfully. That was headed up by a guy called Roger Cordray and he had worked out through friends. He was quite a gambling man, had a quite good association of sort of friends who all went drinking together. Anyway, one of his friends he drank with worked for the railways and explained how railway signalling worked and that was a key thing to, okay, how do we stop the train? The answer is Roger Cordray knew how to do it.

[Dan Snow]

Well, I mean, you've got to take me into the night of the raid. Now.

[Colin McKenzie]

The gang were concerned that the train driver of the train might not actually move it down to the bridge for them. He might just say, no way, and they would be stuffed. So the gang had their own train driver, who was this retired guy that Ronnie Biggs came up with. He was put in the driving seat, but he did not realize what had happened because he wasn't particularly familiar with that type of train. And so when he tried to move it forwards, of course it didn't move because all the brakes were locked on. So basically they just thought he was incompetent. He was quite an elderly guy they nicknamed Pop. And Pop and Ronnie Biggs were sent back to the Land Rover in disgrace because actually they couldn't move the train. And it hadn't been. Everything at that stage was literally hanging on a thread. When Pop can't move the train and he's sent back to the Land Rover with Ronnie Biggs, their only option is to get, drag Paul Jack Mills back out of the engine, put him in his seat and say, drive this train. And basically what Jack Mills said, they said is, drive the train or you'll get some more. You'll be hit again. Jack Mills, despite being in a fairly bad way, of course, is very, very experienced. He lives and breathes train, has probably been doing it all his life, immediately realizes what the problem is. He manages to partially restore some of the vacuum in the remaining part of the train, but not entirely. But that train is just so powerful and with just two carriages behind it, he managed to drag the other two carriages with their lockdown brakes down to the bridge, which is 1100 yards. That's how we get down to the bridge.

[Dan Snow]

And then the money can be unloaded.

[Colin McKenzie]

At that point, they then all hell breaks loose. They then go for it in terms of breaking into the high value package coach, which is cage number three. And there's, you know, they're jumping in through the windows, smashing. There's some fairly flimsy bars on some of the windows, but it's easy enough to smash through the doors and the windows. They're wielding an axe, they've got pickaxe handles. They're hitting everybody in sight, herding them down to the other end of the carriage and making them lie face down on the floor. It's a pretty terrifying experience. And I read all the witness Statements, which is the first thing that really alerted me to this idea is this story actually not quite what we've been told. Because when you read the witness statements of those guys, which are just taken a few hours after this happened, and their handwritten notes taken by the policeman, this guy's just talking to him. It's like a time machine. You're in that moment with those people and what you've realized what has just happened to them has been absolutely terrifying.

[Dan Snow]

So they hack their way into this high value carriage. How much do they get away with?

[Colin McKenzie]

Well, the total value at this point, they've got no idea how much they're going to steal. What they do is steal 120 bags of what they believe is cash and they don't open to see whether they are, but this is what they've been told. So they're just grabbing these big post office bags which are all tied up and there are 128 in the cupboard, which is not even locked inside the high value package cage, and literally pass them from man to man all the way down the embankment and chuck them on the lorry, which is down on.

[Dan Snow]

The road below, and they get away. Do they get to their rural farmhouse?

[Colin McKenzie]

The whole thing about the rural farmhouse is that, you know, there's this expression, honour amongst thieves. Well, there's no honour amongst thieves, certainly not these thieves, because the reason why they had to have this hideout is none of them would let those bags out of their sight until they'd been opened and they'd counted it. They knew exactly how much they'd sell and they'd gotten their share. So basically the farmhouse is an aberration in terms of the planning. It really was a very stupid thing to have done. They could have all been back in marble arch in 45 minutes from that. They could have all been home in bed within an hour. If they just stashed the money, carried on behaving normally, they'd never have been caught. When they arrive at the farmhouse, obviously they're pretty chuffed they've got away with it and they upend the these massive bags and all the packets of notes, which are all tied up with brown paper with Midland bank or whoever it might be. Incidentally, the Midland bank hadn't insured their money. That's how confident they were that this was a very secure form of transport. Anyway, they spent the rest of the night counting these bags and bags and packets of banknotes. It came out at 2.6 million, which is somewhere approaching 50 million in today's money.

[Dan Snow]

So it was a big hole. Did they divide it up there and then?

[Colin McKenzie]

I mean, I don't know exactly. There's no record of exactly how the money was divided up, but I'm pretty sure that after counting it, they would have divided it up because that was the whole purpose that they were, that's why they were in that farmhouse, was so that they, everybody had their stash and everybody knew what their cut was going to be.

[Dan Snow]

So what's next? Presumably they want to get away, they want to get into the golden sunlit uplands of the rest of their lives.

[Colin McKenzie]

Absolutely right. So anyway, the following morning, obviously the police have talked to David Whitby. And David Whitby, he's 28 years old, he's quite sharp, you know, even though he was pretty scared and he'd been held on the embankment. One of the things he noticed was as they were unloading the train, they were passing the bags down the embankment and putting them onto a lorry. And it looked like it was an army lorry, it was kind of khaki colored. And he mentioned this when he was talking to the police, he said it looked like they had an army lorry of some sort. So that was quite interesting because in fact the charade of the robbery in order to get to the robbery site and to get back from it is they had indeed got two Land Rovers and a lorry painted an army khaki and they were wearing army uniforms. The reason why they were doing that is there was a lot of army camps in the area or several army camps in the area, but they were doing exercises and moving people around on a fairly regular basis. So to see some army trucks in the middle of the night with army uniform guys in, the residents, if anybody saw them driving through a village of rural Buckinghamshire would think, oh, it's just those army guys again. So that was quite a clever plan, but at the same time it was their undoing because Dave Whitby noticed this army type lorry. And so the police then announced on the radio the following day, because they were trying to get as much help as they could to be on the lookout for army trucks. And had anybody seen any army trucks driving around, you know, appeal for witnesses and so on. So the criminals were of course listening to the radio to find out what was going on. And then they heard this earth shattering announcement that the police were looking for army trucks. Well, they were planning to drive back to London in those army trucks at some stage. Clearly that was not going to happen now because if they drove out of the farmhouse, they'd immediately be arrested. So there they were in the middle of rural BuckingHamshire with their 2.6 million quid and no means of transport, no way of getting home.

[Dan Snow]

What a nightmare. So what happens next?

[Colin McKenzie]

Well, the other thing that came over the radio, which added to their dilemma, was that not only was their transport compromised and it's not clear exactly who came up with the idea, may have been General MacArthur, who's headed up the investigation from Scotland Yard. Initially, that there was a possibility in their minds that detectives were talking about. Now the police, they're thinking, these guys seem to have disappeared quite quickly. And one of the things that they said to the people on the train is don't move for 30 minutes. So thinking it through, General MacArthur said, it's possible that they're lying low, they're still in the area, maybe they've got a hideout somewhere. Old barns and old sort of buildings around the place. There was a canal nearby. We need to just search this area fairly thoroughly just to make sure that they're not just hiding somewhere, because funnily enough, there's no real report of any of these vehicles moving beyond the area. You know, there was a woman down the road who said she'd seen some army vehicles on the night of the robbery, but that was the only sighting of anything. It was a brilliant bit of detective sort of deduction in a way that again was announced on the news that the police are going to be looking farm buildings and searching disused buildings within a 30 mile radius of the robbery and leather slate farmers 28 miles away.

[Dan Snow]

So do they stay and wait to be captured or they make a run for it?

[Colin McKenzie]

So basically there they are on the farmhouse, they can't use the vehicles and sooner or later, within the next few days, somebody's going to come up the track and knock on the door and say, what's going on here? They would be caught red handed. So they're faced with the situation that their vehicles are compromised. So the first thing that comes to mind is, let's give Brian Field, the guy who gave us this information, the dodgy solicitors clerk, let's give him a call, maybe he can help us out a little bit. And say somebody goes to the local telephone box and calls Brian Field. He's obviously not necessarily particularly experienced in how to get 16 dodgy criminals out of the middle of Buckinghamshire in the middle of the massive police hunt. But anyway, he starts scratching his head thinking, okay, so how can we solve this? Roy James, who was a very gifted amateur racing driver, was Involved in this. He decided that he's going to go to London and try and get some sort of vehicle. He was then dispatched down to London and a combination of Brian Fields and Roy James assembled a sort of motley collection of vehicles, including what was called a doormobile in the old days, a camper van, in other words, and various other things. Bruce Reynolds managed to get to London via a friend of his. And his answer to the transport problem was he went to the chequered flag garage, which was on the Chiswick roundabout, and bought an Austin Healey, which was very, very desirable sports car at the time. I mean, how he felt that was really going to help the situation, I'm not sure. But he did return to the farm in the Austin Healey, which is probably not only conspicuous, but completely, utterly useless in terms of actually being able to transport all these people and all these bags of money. Gives you an insight into his grasp of reality.

[Dan Snow]

I love it. I love it. So when they get away with it or not, do they get away?

[Colin McKenzie]

They did eventually manage to get away in a rather haphazard fashion. Bruce and Ronnie Biggs and Pop, the train driver, I think, squeezed into a couple of cars and headed off. Most of the guys managed to get to Brian Field's house, which was in Berkshire, and they all sort of managed to get there and spent the night, again, making themselves quite conspicuous. Branfield's neighbors complained that the road was blocked with all these different cars and things, and there was a lot of noise going on in the middle of the night. But that only came to light later. But it wasn't exactly the most subtle form of escape. They did anyway manage to get to Brian Field's house, and from then, they gradually sort of dissipated off in different directions. So they managed to get themselves away from the farm, really, by the skin of their teeth.

[Dan Snow]

Then how did the police round them all up in the end? I mean, just. I know there's lots of them, but just sort of generally, were they spending conspicuous amounts of money?

[Colin McKenzie]

The seeds, if you like, of the great, great train robbery story Is Buckinghamshire police completely confounded by this extraordinary crime that all they've been dealing with in the past is poachers or somebody, you know, stealing a tractor or something. So their first announcement to the press is what an extraordinary crime this is. You know, that sort of caught the Jesse James mood. You know, westerns were very popular at the time. So these were the headlines that were going out, how they managed to trace these things. Scotland Yard was called in. And of course, Scotland Yard and particularly the Flying Squad, who were the, if you like, the investigators of this crime. Ultimately, they realized they needed some real sort of serious detective work. The head of Scotland Yard, George Hatherall, and Tommy Butler, who was the chief detective of Scotland Yard, started talking to their informants. Information received, I think, is the expression the police often use. And information received usually means somebody from the underworld grassing or telling them something for some money in a brown envelope in the pub. So basically, George Hatherell and Tommy Butler, the head of flying squad, within 10 days of the robbery, through information received, that is, grasses had a list of names, most of whom had criminal records. And every single person who was subsequently arrested and went to prison is on those lists. So the detective work wasn't huge in terms of establishing who was responsible. Where it became more long winded is obviously they had to actually catch these people who were kind of, you know, all over the place. So a very long sequence of events took place between then and the spring the following year, where gradually they managed to catch up with various people, sometimes in a rather farcical manner. They'd, you know, made themselves conspicuous. And sometimes people had been quite good at evading capture.

[Dan Snow]

Listen to Dan Snow's history. Don't go anywhere.

[Colin McKenzie]

There's more to come.

[Tom Newton Dunn]

I'm Tom Newton Dunn from the General and the Journalist. If you like history hit. We think you'll love our new podcasts from the Times and the Sunday Times. Hearing history in the making today discussed each week with me, the Journalist and General Sir Patrick Sanders.

[Colin McKenzie]

The old global order's breaking down, conflicts on the rise, and the world is getting ever more dangerous.

[Tom Newton Dunn]

Join us as we try to make sense of an ever more dangerous world. The General and the Journalist, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan Snow]

Eventually lots of them go on trial. Was it seen by the public? Was this a cause celebra? Was it rather glamorous? Were they seen as Robin Hood characters or just puri and interest were the trial's big news.

[Colin McKenzie]

It was at the time the biggest criminal trial in British history. It was huge. And it did involve the majority of the people who were involved in the robbery. What had stirred it all up as well, before we got to the trial, there was an enormous amount of press coverage. It was like a sort of reality TV show. People were literally looking at the next installment on their breakfast tables, you know, with the newspaper. The popular press was full of it. And that's part of the reason why we have this extraordinary sort of mythology evolving around this thing. They were having a field day they really were. And the idea of reporting and naming people before they go to trial, they didn't give us stuff about that. You know, there were people's faces, there were photographs, there were names. So when people arrived in the dock, you know, a lot of those people actually their photographs or their names had already been in the press. And it was such a kind of big deal that, I mean, I'm not sure the justice was even had a chance to be done. Not that they didn't do the crime, but that's not really the due process of British law. But nevertheless, there was this huge show trial in Aylesbury. They couldn't even fit everybody in the county court in Aylesbury. So they had to build a special courtroom for all these people and all the people that were going to be attending. I mean, just the number of criminals and their various legal representatives, you know, was bigger than the sort of. That they could even squeeze into the county court. So they built this huge court. It was like a massive courtroom in the council chamber, I think it was. So, you know, this big show trial started unraveling. And again, it was another day by day installment. Some of the criminals were coming dressed in rather smart suits. And these were people who were claiming not to have any money. And their wives had been shopping in Harrods. Bonnie Biggs wife was a great shopper and she came in the most elaborate outfits. And it was really a rather stupid move on their part to think that if they were coming to see their husbands on trial, their husbands were claiming to be innocent of this crime. To be sort of wearing this extravagant clothes, just. That was pantomime, really.

[Dan Snow]

Well, no one think of the banks, Nick. Well, no one think of the banks. Did they get the money back or had lots of it been spent or stashed?

[Colin McKenzie]

The banks didn't really get much of it back. In fact, Roger Cordray was the first to be arrested in Bournemouth and he was arrested with all of his money. And that's how we know what the share was per person. Because actually, if you add up all the various bits that Roger Cordiery had and was arrested for and had spent on cars, it gives you a pretty accurate figure as to what each person's share was. A lot of the money actually when it came to it, or quite sizable. Much of their money went on their legal representation. And this was another thing which is open to question retrospectively. All the people who paid. There were a few people, I think, who had a sort of pro bono type of arrangement that is that illustrious Barristers of the day would do it for free because it was sort of prestigious thing. But actually most of them paid for their legal representation. And the average bill per person was £30,000. That's 1964 money. So how these innocent men from Battersea afford the top barristers today at £30,000 a throw?

[Dan Snow]

Nick, I'm really surprised, really surprised that the real beneficiaries of the Great Train Robbery were a bunch of London lawyers.

[Colin McKenzie]

Yeah, so totally. And there was even an article I read from the Daily Mirror, I think it was, where somebody had remarked on the number of new cars in the car park belonging to the legal representatives.

[Dan Snow]

Were all the people involved in the robbery eventually found and put on trial?

[Colin McKenzie]

The majority of those who took part in the robbery were ultimately brought to justice and went to prison. There were three guys who weren't named at the time. And there's been. One of the big things about the Great Train Robbery is, you know, there's these mystery people who got away with it and, you know, did they do a deal with the police or was there something else going on? And there's all these other sort of things, rather like any kind of conspiracy type thing. People love the idea. There's more to it. A detective who wrote a biography later on, he said they're perfectly aware who these other guys were, but they just couldn't pin anything on them. And the basis on which they did arrest and charge successfully those who went to prison was they had left fingerprints, mostly evidence at the farm. And what is interesting about the sort of legal process is there was no evidence at the crime scene which linked any of the individuals who went to prison with the crime. What they effectively worked on the basis is that the farm was sort of inexorably linked with the crime because they found mailbags there. And they basically said anybody who was at the farm where there was evidence of them being at the farm in terms of physical evidence or fingerprints, must therefore been part of the robbery. But, you know, that's kind of a little bit shaky.

The Great Train Robbery was just about all anybody talked about. The public were hungry for every scrap of information, every detail on who these guys were and how they managed to pull it off. Every segment, every article, theory and speculation made the Great Train Robbery what it is today, a phenomenon. And the coverage didn't end with the trial. The drama of the Great Train Robbery would stretch on for another 40 years, thanks to the audacious prison escape of Ronnie Biggs.

[Dan Snow]

At the time of the robbery, Colin.

[Colin McKenzie]

McKenzie had just graduated from Oxford, as he's laid out in a recent autobiography, Pressing My Luck. He would go on to have a long career on Fleet street during its golden age as the home of the the UK publishing industry and of many of its major newspapers. Ten years later, he uncovered the scoop of the century. Fugitive Ronnie Biggs living it up in Brazil, evading capture from the British police through a series of legal loopholes.

[Nick Russell Pavia]

I was a runner at the BBC when the Great Train Robbery occurred in 63, so I didn't take it in as I would had I been in Fleet street, but obviously it was a huge story and I remember. You might find this hard to believe, but I remember the government almost being grateful that a story had come along to knock Profumo off the front pages because they were suffering very badly. Dear old Mr. McMillan, you've never had it so good from the fact that the Profumo scandal was exciting the papers beyond any story that had ever existed, practically. So the Great Train Robbery comes along and replaces it as the main topic of conversation amongst all the newspapers, not just the tabloids.

[Dan Snow]

Tell me about Ronnie Biggs. Why does he loom so large in our memory? Because I've learned that he wasn't even very significant in the actual robbery itself. He balls up his part of it.

[Nick Russell Pavia]

He did balls up his part of it. He was a pal of Bruce Reynolds, who was one of the two masterminds of the Great Train Robbery. Bruce popped by literally one day at his Red Hill home and said to Ronnie, what are you up to? And he said, oh, I've got my building career going. I've been straight for three years, I've married Charmian, we've got a little boy, we've got another one on the way, but can you lend me 500 quid? As usual, Biggs was skin. And Bruce Wrel said, no, I can't lend you 500 quid at the moment, but I can do something better than that. I can give you a share of a job I'm about to do. Biggs being Biggs, who'd been a regular guest of Her Majesty's ever since the war, couldn't resist joining in, I guess.

[Dan Snow]

But the reason we remember Biggs, therefore, is that escape. Tell me about the escape.

[Nick Russell Pavia]

Right. Well, I was in Fleet street by then, although not covering crime or news, but of course I had long, long chats with Brig Zad in Brazil about his escape. And it was fairly simple, expensive in that a quarter of his money was produced to arrange for a tall van to be parked underneath one Of, I think, the Wandsworth Northern Wall. A couple of the inmates were bribed to look after the wardens who were patrolling during exercise on the afternoon of, I think it was July 5, 1965, and they took care of the wardens. Biggs and a pal called Paul Seaborn burst out of the prison, climbed the ladders which had been put over the wall by the people driving the van. Two others freelance escapees got on board as well, but they didn't get into the van with Biggs and his mate. They were just out and escaped as freelancers. And Biggs was then taken by various groups to a flat in southeast London, where he hid for about two months until the hoo ha died down. And he was able then to get a boat across to Antwerp and from Antwerp a car to Paris, where he underwent very painful and rather unsuccessful plastic surgery on his face.

[Dan Snow]

But did it work?

[Nick Russell Pavia]

The plastic surgery didn't work particularly well. I mean, I'd seen his wanted posters and when I met him, he looked remarkably like the bloke whose pictures, even with a bad Scotland Yard photographer, did look very much like him. But he was quite a tall, imposing fellow, six foot one and a half, blue eyes. When he finally got his plastic surgery in Paris, he then flew to Australia, this is in 1965, and within a year Charmian had tested the water by going on holiday to the Canary Islands with a friend and taking her two boys with her, and hadn't noticed anybody tailing them or checking up on who she was or why she was. So she decided that it would be safe, under a pseudonym, to go to Australia. And indeed she did follow him to Australia a year later, and she landed in Darwin and they'd arranged to stay in a hotel, which Biggs had seen and heard of from Sydney, where he was working. The only problem was the hotel hadn't yet been built and he'd yet again cocked up a bit. But he eventually got hold of a rather shaken Charmian and they bought a car and drove all the way down through Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and finally settled in Adelaide. And they were there for three years before a magazine article came out, at which point Buster Edwards, who'd been on the run, and Bruce Reynolds also had been on the run, had come into prominence because they'd had to give themselves up, basically. And there was a picture of Biggs in amongst this magazine article, and they felt they had to move, so they moved to Melbourne, where he worked for Channel nine Television for quite a while as a carpenter. And then another article arrived which clearly pinpointed him and his family being in Australia. So he went on the run again, and with the help of a friend called Mike Haynes, he was put up in a suburb of Melbourne waiting for a liner, the a Linnis. The SS A Linnis, which he eventually got on February 1970, took him to Panama. And then he managed to look up during the intervening months where he would be relatively safe. And he discovered that Brazil had no extradition treaty with Britain. So he made his way from Panama down to Rio, where he set about trying to get himself a job as a working carpenter. And amazingly, there were enough expats and Americans and people to provide him with enough work, where he survived for another four years until I found him.

[Dan Snow]

How did you come to find him?

[Nick Russell Pavia]

Basically, he was a huge piece of luck. I mean, I'd been on The Express Nearly 10 years by the time this came along. And at the time, Biggs was still in the headlines of Scotland Yard were chasing their tail all over the world. And some of their senior policemen had had wonderful holidays in Australia, South Africa, Cyprus, many visits to Spain. Anyway, my dad lived in Brazil by pure coincidence, and he was over on leave just about November 73, and I gave a little drinks party for him and invited my neighbors. And one of the neighbors, by pure luck, was a 19 year old backpacking student called Constantine Benkendorf. I mean, I knew his mother. I'd never met Constantine. And he came to the party and when he discovered I was a journalist on the express, he said, my goodness, I bumped into somebody you'd be interested to meet. Before he finished his sentence, I said, you bumped into Ronnie Biggs in Brazil, didn't you? And the poor boy went absolutely crimson. And I knew I'd hit the nail on the head. I said, dirk, we won't talk about it now. Too many years. We'll go and have a drink in a pub tomorrow and you can tell me all about it. And believe it or not, Biggs had actually confided in Constantine that he was fed up with life on the run. The parole system had come in in Britain since he was sentenced to 33 years and he would only now have to do one third of his sentence. He'd already done 18 months by the time he escaped from Wandsworth. So by his reckoning, he would only have to do another eight and a half years if he handed himself in to the consulate in Rio. I had first of all got hold of his old girlfriend's phone number. He hadn't paid his phone bill, so it was impossible to Get Biggs on the phone. He never paid any of his bills, but I managed to get him on the phone. I cross examined him for about 20 minutes and was satisfied he was who he claimed to be. I then had a conundrum. Do I take the voluntary redundancy that the Express was frittering out to everybody who wanted it at that time, or do I go into the editor and tell him what I've got? And a great colleague of mine called Brian vine said, look, they've taught you to be a reporter man and boy. You've got to keep it in the Express family and give it to the editor. Well, what I had forgotten was that while I was based in New York that summer, Ian McColl, the editor of the Express, who'd come down from editing the Scottish Daily Express about a year before, had swallowed the story that the Daily Express had found Martin Borman in Buenos Aires. It's probably too old a story for you to recall, but we had a headline with a man crossing the street in Buenos Aires. We found the great Nazi, Martin Bormann. Anyway, it took about a week for this story to unravel and turn out to be a farrago of invention. First of all, the poor innocent creature who was crossing the street turned out to be an innocent Buenos Aires schoolteacher who started suing us for libel. Then we had mentioned Bormann was the director of several large corporations in South America, including, I believe, fit all, who also thought this was a bit of a damaging story to them. So the escapade involving Martin Borman cost the paper a huge fortune, even in 1973. So when I bowl into the editor's office three months later and say, I think I found Ronnie Biggs in Brazil, there's panic on my editor's face, quite the contrary to what I expected. And he actually said later on in the negotiations, colin, I wish you'd never told me this story. He was very Scottish, if that was a bad attempt at a Scottish accent. But he was terrified. And in order to get some insurance, unbeknownst to me, he enlisted the help of Scotland Yard by telling one of the senior commanders there, would they be interested in the fact that one of the his young reporters had found running Biggs in Brazil? And of course the aunt weren't going to say no to a little gift like that. And so they were brought on board with the Daily Express, unbeknownst to me until very late in the piece. So it wasn't a simple story.

[Colin McKenzie]

You listen to Dan Snow's history hit Stick with us.

[Tom Newton Dunn]

Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by historyhit. There are new episodes every week.

[Dan Snow]

So, okay, so you're in Brazil. Where do you come across him for the first time?

[Nick Russell Pavia]

Well, I was in phone contact with him via his ex girlfriend who was an American lady. And therefore I had arranged and I took Constantine the contact out with me and a wonderful photographer called Bill Lovelace, my colleague. And the three of us landed in Rio on the Wednesday about January 28th, 29th, 1974, and we went to the Copacabana Palace Hotel where I was intending for us all to stay, only to discover it was bang full of tourists. And I then relocated to a Hotel about 200 yards further up Copacabana beach called the Trocadero. And I arranged to meet Biggs that afternoon and he arrived on the arm of a beautiful 22 year old blonde and we made our introductions and he thought, and I partly thought we were going to have two wonderful weeks doing his story about all his life on the run before he gave himself up to the consulate in Rio, eating at all Rio's finest restaurants. And so he could have one last splurge before he went back to Wandsworth Prison to do his chokey and Chief Superintendent Slipper. Then his sidekick Peter Jones, A sergeant arrived 24 hours later, parked themselves in another hotel about 300 yards from mine. And just as my photographer was sending his first batch of photographs back from Galior, Rio's airport with a passenger on British Caledonian Airline. Can you imagine? Because we didn't dare send anything by public wire in case it alerted our rivals. So he literally gave a wonderful bunch of pictures of Biggs up at the Corcovada and on the Ponde Asuca, the Sugarloaf Mountain and other various locations where he'd done work for Americans. All that went with a tourist on British Caledonian. Overnight Thursday into Friday, I was told I was going to be given a week to debrief him and then Scotland Yard would arrest him. And I complained and complained and complained, said that's not on. I've given him my word that I will allow him to hand himself in. And they said, you're not in charge of this story anymore, Mackenzie. You do what we say. Well, the Thursday night, so I've only been there 36 hours. I'm summoned to Slipper's hotel room, 300 yards from our hotel. And I learned that they're planning to arrest him the following morning. Now he's gone off into the night with his girlfriend. There are no mobile phones. I've got absolutely no means of getting hold of him. I've got no idea where he spent the night. He's going to walk into a trap. The following morning at 10:00am, he's coming to the Trocadero, up to my room, 9:09 and literally walking into a police trap. And there is literally nothing I can do about it. And I can tell you now, it was the worst 12 hours of my life. I had a sleepless night trying to write down all my notes so I could file a story the following morning. But it got done somehow.

[Dan Snow]

So he walks into your hotel room and the trap is sprung.

[Nick Russell Pavia]

He walks into the hotel room. We're taking a few pictures of him and his girlfriend. There's a knock on the door. The police have been waiting outside, saw him come in. And in walks Slipper, perspiring in a suit and saying, hello, Ronnie, I expect you remember me. And it was awful. They arrested him. He was taken into the bathroom of the hotel suite. They wanted to put handcuffs on him. He said, don't do that, I hate handcuffs. If you agree not to handcuff me, I'll come quietly. Slipper agreed to that, had him by the shoulder and by the arm and took him downstairs. And he waited so that Bill Lovelace, my colleague, could scamper down to the ground floor and get a sort of iconic photograph of him being pushed into the British Consul's Austin Marina car to be taken to the local police station.

[Dan Snow]

I thought we didn't have an extradition treaty with Brazil, so they. How can we start arresting people all over the place?

[Nick Russell Pavia]

This is the biggest problem that Scotland Yard faced. They hadn't made any preparations for removing Biggs from Brazil, and the Brazilians were furious that Scotland Yard had come and arrested somebody without their knowledge. Although the local police station did send an armed copper with them. There'd been no accord at the higher level to agree to this. And, of course, they wanted to know how on earth Biggs survived four years in a country where your papers are everything passports, identity Cards and all the rest of it. How on earth could he have survived four years without being caught prior to this? Was he a drug dealer? Who was he? And so they were not under any circumstances going to let him go back on the British Caledonian flight with the two policemen. My rival at the time, the Daily Mail, got this wonderful shot in the British Caledonian flight when one of the coppers got up and went to the toilet. There was an empty seat by Chief Superintendent Slipper and they got a shot of it from the first class compartment, the empty seat. Where is he? And of course, Biggs was sent up to Brasilia to the foreigners prison.

[Dan Snow]

How did they get Biggs to the UK eventually?

[Nick Russell Pavia]

Well, that was a long, long time after I found him. He was eventually released after three months in jail in Brasilia, allowed to return to Rio. By this time another girlfriend, but his more permanent girlfriend had turned up claiming she was pregnant. Well, at least that gave me a little scoop. And because he was to be responsible for a Brazilian child as yet unborn, the Brazilians consented to allow him to. To stay. They wouldn't allow him to work, which is an extraordinary situation and nonsensical in a way. So in the end he had to become a tourist trap. He cooked barbecues for tourists, signed books, signed autographs, and he made some sort of a living from 74 right through to 2001, by which time he'd had three very bad strokes and the last of them removed his powers of speech. I did actually try to see him in 98. He didn't want to see me because he looked so awful because of his illnesses. I was in rio there in 98, but he survived pretty well. I know some people say, well, he was only the T boy and the train robbery. And that is true to a very large extent. However, I don't think many of his colleagues on the robbery would have been able to learn fluent Portuguese and survive as he did on the run for nine or 10 years in the manner that he did, and command the loyalty from the so many friends and indeed from his wife Charmian in Australia, until she gave up once she saw it was impossible to get back together with him because he would be giving himself up if he did.

[Dan Snow]

What reception did he give when he got back to the UK eventually?

[Nick Russell Pavia]

Well, he didn't get back until 2001, when his son Michael, who was the product of the pregnant lady I was describing earlier. By then, Michael was 27. He'd negotiated a deal with the sun newspaper to bring him back in Rupert Murdoch's private jet. So he literally took off from Rio, landed at Northhold to be met by half of Scotland Yard. I think by then poor old chiefism pretended Slipper was dead, but he was met by all the senior Scotland Yard people, debriefed and put into Belmarsh Prison. And he served eight and a half years in Belmarsh Prison and was released on sympathy grounds because of his medical condition the very same day that the Libyan bomber was released from prison in Scotland, if you recall. And they had a little private bet, the two of them. He told me that who would live the longest. And actually Biggs won that bet because he lived for nearly four more years. He died at the end of 2013, whereas Abdul Ali Merachi died of prostate cancer I think after two years in Libya. And I went to Biggs funeral in North London and there were literally hundreds and hundreds of people there. I don't know whether they were friends of his or colleagues or just criminals celebrating his existence and his life. But he became quite a popular fellow, even though the train robbery itself was obviously quite a violent crime.

[Colin McKenzie]

Really grateful to our guests for coming on and trying to drill down into the truth of those remarkable events. In the meantime, too many people have taken us ever further from the truth, whether it's the criminals, the police, the media. People have enjoyed spinning a yarn when it comes to this extraordinary story. As John Williams wrote, our fascination with the Great Train Robbery shows no sign of fading. It's Britain's real life wizard of Oz. No matter how familiar the tale, we can never resist savoring just one more time. Thanks for listening everybody. This has been Dan Snow's history Hit. The podcast was produced by Mariana Desforges and Dougal Patmore.

[Tom Newton Dunn]

I'm Tom Newton Dunn. From the General and the Journalist. If you like history hit, we think you'll love our new podcasts from the Times and the Sunday Times. Hearing history in the making today discussed each week with me, the journalist and General Sir Patrick Sanders.

[Colin McKenzie]

The old global order's breaking down, conflicts on the rise. And the world is getting ever more dangerous.

[Tom Newton Dunn]

Join us as we try to make sense of an ever more dangerous world. The General and the journalist, wherever you get your podcasts sa.