A straightforward robbery?

Ronnie Biggs  - villain or lovable rogue?  That's the question being asked around the internet following his death the other day.  Not too many of us around now who have clear memories of the "Great Train Robbery", but as one who does, here's my take. He was a villain - simple as that and a pretty small-time one as well. What propelled him into the limelight was not the robbery, but the sentence which the court handed out.  Thirty years - and the probability was that he would have been made to serve the majority of that sentence if not all of it. Rather like the Steven Ward story the other day, there was a general feeling that this was the Establishment taking its revenge rather than any pretence of a proportional punishment, so when he made his escape from Wormwood Scrubs, there was a tendency to think "Go on, my son" and the legend was born.  So his notoriety was more down to society than down to him, although he then certainly made the most of it.