On Thursday August 8, 1963, fifteen masked men stopped the night train from Glasgow to London and robbed it of £2,500,000 (the equivalent of £41 million today). It was called the crime of the century, and the thieves were relentlessly pursued by Scotland Yard until half the gang were behind bars serving huge prison terms. But the story did not end there. First one, then another escaped in thrilling style and fled abroad, catching the world's imagination and making the Train Robbers into folk heroes.

Thirteen years later, the gang combined to tell their story, and Piers Paul Read, author of the bestsellingAlive, agreed to write it. This is the classic, complete and exclusive story of the twentieth-century's most audacious crime and its even more sensational aftermath.

Piers Paul Read, the son of poet and art critic Sir Herbert Read, was born in 1941 and educated at Ampleforth and Cambridge. He has published many novels and works of non-fiction and is the winner of numerous literary prizes, among them the Thomas More medal for distinguished contribution to Catholic literature for his bookAlive. Reid is married with two sons and two daughters and lives in London.

The great train robbers tell their story