FIFTY years after the Great Train Robbery, criminal Ronnie Biggs said he is proud to have been part of the gang.

August 8 marks the 50th anniversary since a gang robbed the Glasgow-Euston mail train in the most audacious heist of its time.

Half a century on, many of the gang have died since died, but Ronnie Biggs will soon celebrate his 84th birthday.

After escaping from prison in 1965, he spent 36 years on the run before finally being arrested and jailed in 2001. He was released in 2009 due to ill health and now lives in a London nursing home.

A new book has been published (The Great Train Robbery – 50th Anniversary – 1963-2013) to mark the anniversary, to which Biggs and Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind behind the robbery who died in February, contributed. It has been written by Reynolds's son Nick and Biggs's biographer Chris Pickard.

Via the spelling board he must now use to communicate, Biggs said yesterday he had no regrets about the crime that made him a household name.

He said: "If you want to ask me if I have any regrets about being one of the train robbers, my answer is, 'No!'.

"I will go further: I am proud to have been one of them. I am equally happy to be described as the tea-boy or 'The Brain'. I was there that August night and that is what counts. I am one of the few witnesses – living or dead – to what was 'The Crime of the Century'."

But although he is proud to have been involved, Biggs admitted some regrets. "It is regrettable, as I have said many times, that the train driver was injured," he said.

"And he was not the only victim. The people who paid the heaviest price are the families of everyone involved in the Great Train Robbery, and from both sides of the track.

"All have paid a price for our involvement in the robbery – a very heavy price, in the case of my family.

"For that, I do have my regrets."