july book 2023

The 60th Anniversary
of the Great Train
Robbery
Looking back 60 years ago this month,
to when a gang of 15 criminals stole
£2.6million in bank notes from a Royal Mail
railway service.
On August 8, 1963, every major
news agency in every major
city around the world was
preparing to report on events
that took place at the Bridego
railway bridge in leafy Ledburn,
Buckinghamshire, as a group
of 15 robbers, led by Bruce
Reynolds, robbed the Royal
Mail train bound for London.
The gang had planned the heist
meticulously - the robbery itself
lasting for around 15 minutes
and saw £2.6million in cash
taken (equivalent to around
£50million today). While the
getaway was clean, police
quickly launched a massive
investigation, and many of
the robbers were eventually
caught (three evaded capture
completely) and sentenced to
long prison terms.
The Great Train Robbery was
one of the most daring and
audacious heists of the 20th
century and has continued to
capture the public’s interest for
decades, so much so that it
has been the subject of
numerous books, films,
and documentaries.
Ronald ‘Buster’ Edwards
managed to escape with a
share of the loot and after a
spell in Mexico returned to
the UK and settled in London.
However, he was eventually
arrested and charged with
conspiring to rob another bank,
and sentenced to 15 years in
prison. His life was documented
in the 1988 film Buster, in
which he was played by Phil
Collins – the story seen as a
nod to the allure and
the eventual downfall of
criminal life.
Nine of the 15 criminals were
arrested in South London three
weeks after the robbery and
were subsequently found guilty
- most sentenced to 30 years in
prison. Ronnie Biggs, however,
escaped from prison in 1965,
had plastic surgery and
spent many years on the run,
eventually ending up in Brazil.
In 2001, he returned to the UK
voluntarily and was arrested,
serving several years in prison
before being released on
compassionate grounds.
The legacy from the heist had
huge repercussions. Royal Mail
were forced to significantly
upgrade its security measures,
while the depth of the
investigation into the robbery
led to a need for greater
complexity in policework,
welcoming in a generation that
began to embrace methods
such as fingerprinting and,
nowadays, the ability to solve
crime using CCTV – of which
there was none in the case
of the Great Train Robbery
despite its gradual introduction
in commercial settings – and
forensic techniques, including
DNA testing.