Why we ran an obituary of Ronnie Biggs, the Great Train Robber In fact, over the years we have run obits of almost everyone associated with the Robbery, from Bruce Reynolds, its mastermind, to Michael O'Flaherty, who was on the Daily Express team that found Biggs in Brazil. Film producers, prison governors, even criminals who might have been on the Train Robbery crew but weren't - all have made it on to our page. And that logic means, to answer Graham Pointer's question, that we certainly would have done obits of Mills and David Whitby, had they died today. Of course, tone is everything. We tried hard to get the balance right in the Biggs obit, telling the tale of the robbery, but also reminding readers twice in the opening paragraphs of Mills's fate. But for readers who really want to know why we do obits of people like Ronnie Biggs, or of certain dictators, or terrorists, it is not because we are failing in moral judgement, or indulging in some kind of moral equivalence. Take the case of two former Nazis who died recently. One, Erik Priebke, we obituarised. Another, Heinrich Boere, we did not (unlike some papers). Both were war criminals, both found guilty of heinous crimes. It would be ludicrous to suggest one is a "worse" person than the other. At the time, called to make a reasonably snap judgement, my reasoning was this: the war was filled with absolutely base murder, but Priebke was involved in a single extraordinary event that marked Rome and Italy, and in which Hitler was directly involved. Its scale meant that the ramifications ran beyond Priebke. The event was a slice of history, and effectively became the subject of the obit, just as it is the Great Train Robbery that is effectively the subject of the Biggs piece. Indeed Biggs made the link explicit. He identified himself with the Great Train Robbery more than anyone else. He exploited public interest in the case. And that in turn forms part of his story, and so his obituary. But public interest there certainly was. In the obit there is a par which explains why he was so keen to peddle his connection with the Robbery. It was, effectively, his job. [in Brazil] Biggs's financial position was often precarious. [He] supplemented his income in the usual manner of the celebrity: he sold T-shirts bearing his name to tourists; wrote his autobiography, Odd Man Out (1994); and was a constant and loquacious source of quotes for the press. Maybe we in the press should have been less willing to seek those quotes. But we suspected our readers would want to hear them. And as I write this, I see that Biggs's obit is the fourth most read story on the whole Telegraph website. That, for an obit, is almost unprecedented.