My Autobiography: The Inside Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Heist
Ronnie Biggs and Chris Pickard
SIXTY years on from the infamous Great Train Robbery that
made his name, thief and criminal playboy Ronnie Biggs is still a household
name and retains the power to fascinate many people.
So is it the man or the myth that makes Biggs, who died in
2013, both a latter-day Robin Hood and the odd man out? Whatever the answer to
that conundrum, Ronald Arthur Biggs will always be the best remembered member
of a gang of sixteen who held up a mail train in August of 1963.
This official autobiography of Biggs’ entire, chequered life
– now revised and updated – was written by the man himself in tandem with Chris
Pickard (pictured below), known as the ‘ghost’ of Biggs after helping the robber write his bestselling
autobiography Odd Man Out: The Last Straw, plus The Great Train Robber, The
Great Train Robbery – The Crime of the Century, and the novel Keep On Running.
Among their number was Biggs and he would be a legend of
British crime long after most of the other names were forgotten, and the money
spent... or lost.
From the robbery, his conviction and subsequent escape from HMP Wandsworth, Biggs tells how he became one of the world’s most hunted men but still managed to outrun and outthink the posse of law enforcement officers and the media that chased him all the way. From his time in Australia, plastic surgery in Paris, and his years on the run in Brazil – complete with two kidnappings and an attempted suicide – to his discovery and arrest in Rio de Janeiro, this comprehensive autobiography covers the two attempts to kidnap him, and the rise to stardom of his son Michael, born to Biggs’ girlfriend, Raimunda.
Biggs also reveals exactly what happened to him from the early 1990s onwards, including his strokes, his attempted suicide, the death of his partner and friends, the extradition attempts, the Rio carnival tribute, his decision to come back to the UK, and his much-publicised return in 2001 after 13,087 days on the run. With its brand new 10,000-word timeline, the book covers not only the life, death and legacy of Biggs but also the most detailed facts ever published about the events surrounding the Great Train Robbery itself.
Marking the sixtieth anniversary of Britain’s most notorious
crime, this is the daring, exciting and often misunderstood life of a man who saw
and did it all, told in his own words.
(John Blake, paperback, £9.99)
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