Bruce Reynolds

Early life Bruce Richard Reynolds was born at Charing Cross Hospital, in Charing Cross, central London, the only child of Thomas Richard and Dorothy Margaret (née Keen). He was initially brought up in Putney. His mother, a nurse, died in 1935 when he was aged four. His father, a trade-union activist at the Ford Dagenham assembly plant, married again, and the family moved to Gants Hill. By the age of 17 he had become bored with the routine and was working in the Bland/Sutton Institute of Pathology at Middlesex Hospital,

Criminal career After undertaking some petty crime and spending time in HMP Wormwood Scrubs and Borstal The police stated their belief that the intent of the cosh attack was grievous bodily harm and not robbery. Hogan was sentenced to 2½ years and Reynolds to 3½ years imprisonment. After spending time in HMP Wandsworth and HMP Durham, on release in 1960 he then became an antiques dealer and thief.

He joined a gang with a future close friend Harry Booth and his future brother-in-law John Daly. Later on, he worked with Jimmy White and met Buster Edwards at Charlie Richardson's club. Richardson in turn introduced him to Gordon Goody. After the robbery, Reynolds contacted underworld boss Joey Pyle, who fixed up several places for Reynolds to hide – his brother's house in Cobham, Pyle's own place in Clapham South until the end of August 1963, then a flat in Croydon above a dry-cleaners that Pyle jointly managed. He subsequently spent six months in a mews house in South Kensington waiting for a false passport. Assuming the name Keith Clement Miller,

For Christmas 1964, the family were joined in Acapulco by fellow train robbers Buster Edwards, who had not yet been caught, and treasurer Charlie Wilson, who had escaped from HMP Winson Green. Offered a deal by the Director of Public Prosecutions to plead guilty and avoid their pursuing his son, wife and family on further criminal charges, Reynolds agreed to plead guilty and was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. In the book, Reynolds commented on the curse that followed him around, as no one wanted to employ him either legally or illegally:

Having either spent or had removed by courts the monies that he gained through crime, by the 1990s Reynolds was living on income support in a flat in Croydon, Greater London, supplied by a charitable trust. At the time of his death, Reynolds was working on The Great Train Robbery 50th Anniversary: 1963–2013, published by Mpress in July 2013.

In popular culture

Multiple media properties and parodies have been produced about the Great Train Robbery [see Details of the Great Train Robbery and the robbers]. Examples featuring Bruce Reynolds include: (The Gentleman Prefers Payment, also known as Great British Train Robbery) which aired on ARD in 1966 and featured Horst Tappert as Reynolds, Robbery (1967) with Stanley Baker as a character based upon Reynolds, and Buster (1988) with Larry Lamb as Reynolds.

In 2012, Reynolds was portrayed in the television series Mrs Biggs by Jay Simpson.

He was also the subject of the song "Have You Seen Bruce Richard Reynolds", originally by Nigel Denver and later covered by the UK band Alabama 3. Reynolds himself appears on the Alabama 3 version.

On the day that Biggs died, 18 December 2013, the BBC broadcast the first of a two-part series, The Great Train Robbery, a dramatisation of the events, first from the criminals' perspective and then from that of the police. The programme had already been scheduled for broadcast on that date. Bruce Reynolds was played by Welsh actor Luke Evans.