Bruce Reynolds funeral: Ronnie Biggs attends Great Train Robber's sendoff

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/mar/20/bruce-reynolds-funeral-ronnie-biggs
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The church of St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, just round the corner from the Old Bailey, has seen everything in its 900-year history, from the Great Fire of London to the bombs of the second world war, but it can never have hosted an event quite like the one that took place on Wednesday. The occasion was the funeral of Bruce Richard Reynolds, ringleader of the Great Train Robbery that took place almost exactly 50 years ago.

Many of his fellow robbers have already had their collars felt by the Almighty but perhaps the best known of them, Ronnie Biggs, now partially paralysed through a series of strokes, was in attendance. He gave a cheery two fingers to the massed ranks of photographers as he arrived. Unable to speak now, Biggs had a message read out on his behalf: "Bruce was a true friend, a friend through good and bad times and we had plenty of both." Another of the old robbers, Bob Welsh, was there too, also in a wheelchair.

Nick Reynolds described his father as "my best friend, soulmate and older brother … He chose a lunatic path and paid the price." He recounted how his father had studied sociology in prison under the tutelage of Professor Laurie Taylor and the late Stan Cohen and had become a different person. "He was an artist at heart and although he referred to the train robbery as his Sistine Chapel, his greatest triumph was in reassessing himself and changing his attitude about what was important in life."

Of the looming August anniversary of the robbery, he said his father had not been looking forward to all the bother from the media. "So, as he had so often done before when wanted for questioning, he chose to split the scene." Nick's sons, Spiggy and Otto, read poems for their grandfather.
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This story still fascinates