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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Great Train Robbery
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The name (borrowed from a famous silent film of 1903) which became attached to a crime in England in 1963. Early in the morning of August 8 a gang stopped a Post Office train from Glasgow when it was passing through Buckinghamshire. The thieves hit the driver on the head with an iron bar (he later died) and took mailbags containing £2,631,684 in old bank notes, on their way to London for pulping. After hiding up for a few days at Leatherslade Farm, near Oakley, they escaped with the money – of which very little was ever recovered. Several of the gang became well-known figures in the following years – in particular Ronald Biggs (who escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965 and who has managed to foil a succession of attempts to extradite him from Barbados and Brazil) and Buster Edwards (the subject of the 1988 feature film Buster).
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