Ronnie Biggs: Criminal who became the best known of the Great Train Robbers despite his lowly status in the team

Ronnie Biggs, more than any other criminal of his generation, learnt the hard way just how fine the line between success and failure could be. When he was no more than a jobbing petty thief among south London's criminal fraternity, his relationship with a retired train driver led to his inclusion in the team that committed "the crime of the century".

On 8 August 1963, in what became known as the Great Train Robbery, the gang stopped a Post Office train travelling from Glasgow, and stole mailbags containing used bank notes to the value of £2,631,684 on their way to London for pulping. Biggs' lowly status as the "tea boy" in a tried and tested robbery team comprising some of the most notable criminal "faces" of their generation, and his subsequent escape, took him around the world and ultimately turned him into a folk hero, while he teased the British legal system to distraction for over 40 years.

Biggs was born in Lambeth in 1929, the youngest of four surviving children of a bus driver father who was a strict disciplinarian. His childhood was little different from any other south Londoner in the Depression. He was, however, one of a generation of future London villainy evacuated during the Second World War, and petty theft and shoplifting served to supplement his meagre diet during his time in the West Country. He returned to London in 1942, his mother died a year later and in 1945 he was in court for stealing pencils from a shop; two more court appearances followed. In 1947 he joined the RAF and two years later was dishonourably discharged after a six-month sentence for breaking and entering.

Shortly after his release he found himself in Lewes prison for stealing a car, and it was here that he met the remarkable Bruce Reynolds. The smart, ambitious and imaginative Reynolds was to forge a career that was the antithesis of Biggs' inept ducking and diving. Yet at an early age they shared a romantic view of the world, encompassing a love of jazz and literature that endured for the rest of their lives.

Unlike so many wives of villains, Biggs's wife Charmian was no bit-part player. They met in 1958 and eloped to avoid the wrath of Charmian's headmaster father, the elopement funded by Charmian's theft of £200 from her place of work, and when the money had run out she served as a look-out while Ronnie went thieving. Charmian got two years' probation, Biggs a custodial sentence of two and a half years.

They were married in 1960; Biggs established himself as a self-employed carpenter and their son Nicholas was born the same year. The family prospered, but in 1963 the birth of a second son, Christopher, found Biggs with a cash-flow problem that he sought to resolve by way of a loan from his old friend Reynolds. By now a successful thief with a taste for the better things in life, Reynolds instead offered him the chance to join in on an unspecified "big job". The precondition of his involvement was to find a train driver; a disillusioned driver working past retirement age who had contacted him to carry out some home improvements was recruited.

This was a highly professional team gleaned from two sets of successful robbers, and the initial response of the team to the recruitment of an incompetent amateur was hostile. But the wisdom that Biggs' involvement was the price of getting a train driver prevailed.

He was to act as the train driver's minder and to make himself useful. However, when the night train from Glasgow to Euston was robbed on 8 August, Biggs' 34th birthday, Biggs' driver proved unfamiliar with diesel technology, and the coshed driver, Jack Mills, was forced to move the train. The robbery had been mooted for years among the professional criminal community, but the prize by far exceeded any expectations. The loot amounted to more than £2.5m, and Biggs's share was £147,000.

However, the robbers had left a wealth of forensic evidence at their base, Leatherslade Farm near Oakley in Buckinghamshire, including Biggs' fingerprints on a ketchup bottle and a Monopoly set, and they were hunted down within a month. Soon after Biggs had placed his share of the loot with some well-paid minders, he was arrested. Thirteen gang members were rounded up; eight, including Biggs, were charged with armed robbery. Branded by Mr Justice Davies, who sentenced him on 15 April 1964, as a "specious and facile liar", Biggs was sentenced to 30 years, the going rate at the first wave of Great Train Robbery trials.

Like many famous escapers, Biggs displayed a certain competence as a prisoner that was not apparent during his career as an active criminal. On 8 July the following year he escaped from Wandsworth prison via a rope ladder and furniture van, with funds provided by Charmian. A £40,000 package deal, including passports, transportation and plastic surgery was negotiated, and Biggs found himself in Australia with a new identity. The family settled in Adelaide, where Charmian gave birth to a third son.

Ronnie returned to his trade as a carpenter before fear of detection by Interpol led to a move to Melbourne. After three years the family was tracked down and Charmian was arrested, but not before she had arranged for Ronnie's escape. He moved between safe houses before Charmian, having sold her story to the papers, funded his fateful trip to Rio.

Although he missed his family, Rio suited Biggs; he worked as a handyman, enjoyed the sunshine, explored the nightlife and discovered dope-smoking. Then in 1971 he received a letter from Charmian in Australia informing him that their eldest son Nick, aged 10, had been killed in a car crash. Biggs was devastated but, despite the temptation to attend the funeral, plunged himself into his new life. However, being unable to be with his family weakened his resolve, and by 1974 he was ready to give himself up. With the introduction of parole in Britain, had he not escaped he would now be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.

With surrender in mind, a £35,000 interview deal was set up with the Daily Express. However, the Flying Squad's Jack Slipper, tipped off by the paper, arrested Biggs in Rio. Unfortunately for Slipper – a veteran of the original investigation squad – one of Biggs' girlfriends, Raimunda, was pregnant and Biggs was the father, a fact that made any attempt to extradite him illegal. Charmian, making a new life in Australia having set up a trust fund with the proceeds of a deal with The Sun, visited Rio and left accepting defeat and divorce.

Biggs was prohibited from working as a condition of his staying in Brazil. After Raimunda gave birth to a boy, Michael, he struggled to support his new family; Raimunda found fame in Europe as a stripper. Biggs sold interviews, published two autobiographies and in 1978 sang with the Sex Pistols on "No One is Innocent" (he claimed to have received no royalties).

In 1981 he narrowly avoided kidnap by a group of former Scots Guards. Two years later they got him as far as Barbados before the authorities intervened. His son Michael became a pop singer and Ronnie became a tourist attraction, with T-shirts and the $50 "Biggs Experience", featuring hospitality in his home and a chat about the train robbery. He made a small sum of money from a disastrous film, Prisoner of Rio (1988), produced a guidebook to Rio and advertised a hair restorer.

In 1997 the Brazilian Supreme Court rejected a request to extradite him, and he suffered a series of strokes.These, and a desire to spend his remaining days in his homeland, led to his return to the UK in 2001. He was incarcerated in Belmarsh prison in London, where he married Raimunda. He suffered strokes and minor heart attacks, yet the Home Office remained impervious to appeals from his son and legal team. In 2006 he was moved to Norwich prison on "compassionate grounds".

Early in 2009 he fell ill with pneumonia, prompting fresh calls for his release. However, despite a parole board recommendation the Justice Secretary Jack Straw refused on the grounds that the 79-year-old remained "wholly unrepentant". After further health problems, in August 2009 he was granted his release.

Biggs' celebrity was based on the fact that his exile was perceived by many as a kind of victory. The most vivid image of him is on the cover of his autobiography Ronnie Biggs: his own story (1981). He is laughing, arms aloft and triumphant, on a golden Rio beach. And like so many of his compatriots on vacation, he is wearing a replica England football shirt.

Ronald Arthur Biggs, robber and carpenter: born London 8 August 1929; married 1960 Charmian Powell (divorced 1976; two sons, and one son deceased), 2002 Raimunda Rothen (one son); died London 18 December 2013.