A CROYDON man and friend of the great train robbers Ronnie Biggs and Bruce Reynolds has released a quiz book with links between the pair and his home town.
Mike Gray, 56, formerly of Bute Road, Waddon, has written four books about the infamous gang, with his latest – The Great Train Robbery Quiz Book – released in December.
His obsession with the robbers began while as a child his father was a prison officer at Wandsworth when Ronnie Biggs escaped in 1965.
"During 1974, when I was at school, we were asked to do a reporting project and it was the same time as Biggs was found in Brazil," the author said.
"It brought everything back to me and I obsessively kept every press cutting I could find until I had hundreds and hundreds of pages of information."
Then in 1989, Mr Gray began writing to Biggs in Brazil and sending him black liquorice, something he couldn't get in exile.
"That's when we started this relationship and kept in touch over the years," Mr Gray said. Through Biggs, the author was put in touch with Bruce Reynolds and his son Nick.
"That's when I began to realise that Bruce was basically a Croydon man," he said.
"He lived here until his death in 2013, first in Oval Road and then in a housing association flat.
"Everyone thinks he had this glamorous lifestyle but he didn't, he relied on handouts from others in the underworld and was completely unemployable.
"His wife died two years before him and it was all a bit sad in the end.
"But I became good friends with Bruce and used to see him a lot."
After the Great Train Robbery in 1963, which he masterminded, Reynolds was not arrested until 1968.
Two months of his time on the run was spent living in a flat above a dry-cleaners in Handcroft Road, Croydon, right under the nose of the authorities on the hunt for him.
At one point when he was hiding out in Handcroft Road, officers from Scotland Yard raided the flat.
"They knocked the door down and found Frances with a naked man in the kitchen," Mr Gray said.
"He pretended that he was someone completely different and that he was having an affair with Bruce Reynolds' wife.
"He's shaved his moustache off and had no clothes on, the police were completely fooled."
After his release in 1978, Reynolds returned to Croydon with his wife Frances.
Mr Gray has written three other books – Ronnie Biggs – The Inside Story, The Ronnie Biggs Quiz Book and 101 Interesting Facts on Ronnie Biggs And The Great Train Robbery.
All of them are available on Amazon.
