The Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, the most well-known member of a gang that made off with £2.6m from a Glasgow to London mail train, has died at the age of 84. Biggs was caught after the robbery and received a 30-year jail sentence but escaped from Wandsworth prison and spent 36 years on the run, leading a playboy lifestyle in South America.

He finally surrendered to British police in 2001 but was freed in 2009 on health grounds. He had been ill for some time and had suffered a series of strokes.

Biggs died on the day the BBC was due to broadcast the first part of a two-part TV dramatisation of the robbery. The first part, a Robber's Tale, focuses on Bruce Reynolds, the leader of gang who died earlier this year. The second, A Copper's Tale, tells the story of Tommy Butler, the detective chief superintendent who pursued them.

Ronnie Biggs leaving the wake for Bruce Reynolds, the Great Train Robbery mastermind, in London in March. Photograph: Jules Annan/Barcroft Media

The Twitter account @ronniebiggsnews, which publicises Biggs's website and autobiography, said: "Sadly we lost Ron during the night. As always, his timing was perfect to the end. Keep him and his family in your thoughts." He died on Wednesday morning, according to his spokeswoman.

At one of his last public appearances two years ago, to launch his book, Odd Man Out: the Last Straw, an ailing Biggs said he would be remembered as a lovable rogue.

The offical Scotland Yard portrait of Ronnie Biggs, released after h escaped from Wandsworth prison. Photograph: Metropolitan police

But many have been quick to point out that the driver of the train, Jack Mills, was struck by an iron bar during the infamous robbery and never fully recovered. Daniel Hamilton, a Conservative European election candidate, tweeted: "Ronnie Biggs was a violent criminal who evaded facing justice for decades. I find today's gushing eulogies slightly offensive."

Tory lobbyist Alex Deane tweeted: "Come on media. Biggs wasn't a cuddly heart of gold cockney character to be feted. His gang beat a man with an iron bar, ruining his life."

Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs wearing an England football shirt on Copacabana beach in March 1977. Photograph: Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Peter Rayner, former chief operating officer of British Rail, has been critical of Biggs in the past but expressed sympathy for his family.

He said: "My view is that whilst I was – and am – critical of the Great Train Robbers and the heroes' welcome they got, especially in light of the death of Jack Mills, my sympathies go out to his family and I would not wish to speak further on the subject."

Ronnie Biggs in 1992. Photograph: Rex Features

Poverty and poor health forced Biggs to give himself up after his high-profile time on the run. Ignoring protests from his family, including his son Michael, who begged him to reconsider, he sent an email to Scotland Yard saying that he wanted to return and needed a passport.

He struck a deal with the Sun newspaper, which flew him back to Britain in May 2001 on an executive jet stocked with curry, Marmite and beer.

He was arrested immediately upon arrival in the UK and found himself back in a dock later the same day, a feeble shadow of the cocky cockney villain he had been last time he faced a judge.

Ronnie Biggs with son Michael and his wife and grandchild in Brazil in 2000. Photograph: DAVID CAIRNS / Rex Features/DAVID CAIRNS/Rex Features

He was transferred to the high-security Belmarsh prison to continue his sentence.

Biggs had joined the gang that held up the Royal Mail night train from Glasgow to London on his 34th birthday. His role was to find a driver for the train, but the driver he found had problems with the controls and the train's legitimate driver, 57-year-old Mills, was coshed with iron bars and forced to move the train. He died seven years later.

The hold-up, at Sears Crossing in Buckinghamshire, was planned in minute detail and, initially at least, was a spectacular success. The gang shared out the proceeds at isolated Leatherslade Farm – Biggs taking about £148,000 – but thereafter things started to go badly wrong, with nearly all of the gang members being rounded up by the police.

Sentenced to 30 years behind bars on 15 April 1964, Biggs was to serve just 15 months in prison.

On 8 July 1965, he made a daring escape from Wandsworth prison in London. While other prisoners created a diversion in the exercise yard, Biggs scaled a wall with a rope ladder and dropped on to a furniture van parked alongside.

After a brief stopover in Paris for £40,000-worth of plastic surgery to change his appearance, he travelled to Australia where he adopted the name Terry King, and later Terry Cook. For several months he ran a boarding house in Adelaide, and in June 1966 his wife Charmian and two children joined him, also on false passports.

He went on to build a new life for himself as jobbing carpenter under the name Michael Haynes. In 1974, he was tracked down in Rio by the Daily Express reporter Colin MacKenzie – and shortly afterwards by Detective Inspector Jack Slipper of Scotland Yard. But the Yard's efforts to get Biggs back to Britain were foiled by Brazilian law.

He became a familiar figure in the Lord Jim pub in Ipanema, and around his neighbourhood in Santa Teresa, where he would invite paying guests to hear his stories as a way to make money after the robbery stash ran out.

In 1978, Biggs made a record, No One is Innocent, with punk rock group the Sex Pistols. In March 1981, Biggs was kidnapped in Rio by a gang of adventurers and smuggled to Barbados by boat. Their aim was to bring him back to Britain. But the Barbados high court decided the rules governing extradition to Britain had not been properly put before the island's parliament, and Biggs was allowed to return to Rio.

Although he left South America more than a dozen years ago, he is still remembered in Brazil. Newspapers and magazines ran news of Biggs's death on the front of their websites on Wednesday.

Veja described the Londoner as "the thief of the 20th century", while Folha de São Paulo ran a photograph of Biggs giving a two-finger salute and noted that his son Michael was a singer with the Brazilian children's group Balloon Magic. Globo carried old newspaper pages reporting the various attempts to extradite Biggs from his home in Rio. Relating how he first came to Brazil, the newspaper noted "Biggs found his paradise in the early 70s. As soon as he read a postcard from Botafogo beach that told him this was a country where Nazi war criminals fled, he jumped on the first plane to Rio de Janeiro."

Biggs suffered his first stroke in 1998 though he recovered to throw a 70th birthday party. However, second and third strokes followed, permanently ending his life of beaches and parties, and starting the chain of events that led to his return to Britain and a life as prisoner 002731.

In January 2003, his son Michael complained that his father was assaulted by a member of prison staff at Belmarsh.

Appeals to have Biggs released were ignored. In October 2003, an appeal against his sentence was thrown out by a high court judge as "hopeless" and "misconceived". Biggs was moved from Belmarsh to Norwich prison in July 2007 to live on a unit for elderly inmates.

The justice secretary, Jack Straw, refused him parole in 2009 and accused him of being "wholly unrepentant" about his crimes. But Biggs was old and severely ill, lying in a bed in Norwich hospital with pneumonia and fractures of the hip, pelvis and spine. After three strokes he was unable to eat, speak or walk.

He was finally granted compassionate release from his prison sentence on 6 August 2009, just two days before his 80th birthday.