On August 8 1963, a Royal Mail train was making its way to London from Glasgow. It was intercepted at Ledburn, Bucks by a gang of masked men who escaped with £2.6million, equivalent to at least £50million in today’s money. The incident would enter British folklore as 'The Great Train Robbery'. The police took just a few weeks to find the gang members, arrest them and put them behind bars, and their work was hailed as the pinnacle of policing.
However, three months into a 30-year sentence, Ronnie Biggs, one of the gang members, escaped from Wandsworth prison and overnight became Britain’s most wanted man. The police and the establishment were left embarrassed, and ordinary people started to root for this antihero. The media rolled out the Biggs story like a soap opera – and he has rarely been out of the media ever since.
Despite his notoriety, the truth behind his escape has remained a mystery. Biggs has been involved with a number of heavily managed appearances and sensationalised interviews for the tabloid press. However, none of these has revealed anything new or got remotely close to finding out what Ronnie really got up to in his years in exile. Now, over four hours of previously unheard tapes recorded by ‘Daily Express’ journalist Colin Mackenzie – who tracked him down in Rio, Brazil in 1974 – reveal the real Ronnie Biggs for the first time.
