RONNIE Biggs’ links to a North-East jail are exposed in a new book by a long-term friend of the late great train robber. Mark Tallentire reports.

IT was arguably the crime of the century.

After tampering with railway line signals, a 15-strong gang of robbers hold up a Royal Mail train and steal £2.6m – the equivalent of £46m in today’s money.

Those were the events of August 8, 1963, and what became known as the Great Train Robbery.

Ronnie Biggs, one of the gang, famously escaped from prison and lived as a fugitive for 36 years, before returning to the UK in 2001.

Biggs spent eight years in prison before being released on compassionate grounds. He died shortly before Christmas, aged 84.

Mike Gray was just a boy when the Great Train Robbery took place but, having first taken an interest in the crime while working on a school project back in 1974, it would become a major part of his life too.

Over the next 15 years, he built up a collection of newspaper cuttings about the robbery so extensive it filled a large suitcase.

Wondering what to do with his archive, Mike decided to write to Biggs, by then living a notoriously high-profile life beyond the reach of the British authorities, in Brazil.

Letters were exchanged and so began a firm friendship which continued after Biggs’ homecoming and right up to his death in a north London nursing home.

Since 2009, Mike, an estate agent employee from Kent by day – a writer by night, has published a series of books about Biggs and his infamous crime.

Now, in his latest – 101 Interesting Facts about Ronnie Biggs and The Great Train Robbery, the gang’s links to Durham Prison are explored.

After the gang were sentenced to between three and 30 years behind bars, three – Gordon Goody, Roy “The Weasel” James and Thomas Wisbey – were sent to Durham, then the highest security prison in the country.

Goody was regarded as crucial to the operation, but each of the trio got 30 years.

“Durham’s E-wing was infamous,” Mike says.

“It had some of the most dangerous prisoners in the UK.

“But sending the robbers to Durham was also an extra punishment, because they all lived in the south of England.

“Visits were allowed once every two weeks in those days.”

Biggs’ escape from London’s Wandsworth prison in August 1965 prompted even tighter security at Durham, with a machine-gun trained officer on every corner.

And soon Goody, Weasel and James were joined by a fourth gang member – corrupt solicitor’s clerk Brian Field.

But it would be the original trio’s feelings on life inside that would cause the next public sensation.

In November 1965, they complained about E wing’s exercise area being too enclosed, demanding access to the prison’s main yard.

The then governor refused the request, viewing it as an escape threat. But one journalist, Alfred Browne of the British Press Association, was allowed behind the gates to speak to the robbers.

The story hit the headlines and within three months Goody, James and Wisbey were moved from Durham to a new “super wing” at Parkhurst prison, on the Isle of Wight.

Durham’s connections with the gang don’t end there, though.

Bruce Reynolds, the reputed mastermind of the robbery, spent several years on the run but was sent to Durham to start his 25-year sentence, remaining there until 1970.

“The public interest in the case has been because it was effectively an attack on the government,” Mike says.

“They were sentenced as if it was treason. They were very lucky not to be hanged.”

Asked his feelings about the crime, which was at the time Britain’s largest robbery and saw train driver Jack Mills beaten over the head with a metal bar, he says: “The hit on the train driver was the blot on the copy book.

“If that hadn’t happened, everyone would have looked on them as heroes.

“But all their lives were ruined. The money didn’t bring them success and happiness.

“I met Bruce and Ronnie for many years. They were non-violent criminals. Ronnie’s criminal record before the robbery was laughable.”

So, two months after his death, how should we remember Ronnie Biggs?

“He was the tea boy that became a legend,” Mike says.

“None of the other robbers wanted him in on it. They voted 15 to one against it. There was a lot of hatred for him.

“He was a nice guy. I got on very well with him. He didn’t have had a bad bone in his body.”

101 Interesting Facts on Ronnie Biggs and The Great Train Robbery, from Apex Publishing, is available now on Kindle, priced £1.99.