French-born arsonist Julien Chautard handed himself into police yesterday after an audacious escape in which he succeeded in slipping away from a group of new arrivals at Pentonville prison in north London. As the other prisoners were being marched inside, Chautard managed to duck behind the prison van that had just brought them there there from Snaresbrook crown court (where ­Chautard, 39, had been sent down for seven years). He then succeeded in leaving the jail a few minutes later clinging to the underside of the same van. Pretty smart, Julien. But how does this daring breakout rank against some of history's best and boldest?

John Gerard, London, 1597

Gerard, a Jesuit priest, made a particularly inspired escape from the Tower of London. After first writing to Catholic sympathisers, and inserting secret clues in each letter hidden by an invisible ink of his own devising, the priest hacked his way through the stones around his cell door, finessed his way past the guards in the corridor outside, and reached a high wall overlooking the Tower's moat. Far below, a rowing boat waited in the darkness. The oarsman tossed Gerard a rope, which he knotted round a handy cannon and, on hearing the ­signal that the other end had been safely tied off on the other side of the moat, shimmied down to safety. He was never recaptured.

Casanova, Venice, 1755

As persistent and meticulous in engineering his jailbreaks as he was in seducing other men's wives, the convicted adulterer found himself in 1755 behind bars in The Leads, so named for the impenetrable lead that covered its walls and roof. To cut a long story short, Casanova fashioned a digging implement out of an iron rod and spent months working on a tunnel in the ­corner of his cell. When he was moved to another cell, he feared he would be watched so asked a monk next door to do his digging for him. The pair made good their escape by using the same trusty iron tool to batter down the doors in their path.

Colonel Thomas E Rose, Virginia, 1864

Rose, one of 1,200 Union officers banged up in a former grocer's warehouse in Richmond, ­Virginia, during the American civil war, dug his way to freedom with a few colleagues using pocket knives and pieces of scrap wood. Their 50ft tunnel started in the store's cellar and ended in an empty shed. Rose was so chuffed with his construction that he returned to the jail a few days later and led another 15 men to freedom. In all, 93 Union officers used the route, prompting even the Confederate Richmond Examiner to describe the feat as "an extraordinary escapade".

Papillon, French Guiana, 1933, 1934, 1936, 1938, 1939, etc

Henri Charrière, a Paris underworld mobster, was sentenced to hard labour for life in 1931 and transported to the prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni in French Guiana. He bust out of there in November 1933 and sailed to ­Colombia, where he was rearrested. He escaped again, and spent several happy and sexually active months in a native pearl divers' village before being packed off to solitary ­confinement on St Joseph's Island back in French Guiana. After several further attempts to escape, he ended up feigning madness on the grounds that the penal colony's mental hospital would be easier to leave than its jail. This, too, failed – but he did get to be played by Steve McQueen in a major Hollywood movie in 1973, and makes it on to this list for sheer perseverance.

Frank Morris, Clarence and John Anglin, Alcatraz, 1962

Alcatraz, built to house America's most violent criminals on an island in the San Francisco bay, was considered escape-proof. This trio proved that theory wrong. For six months they chipped away at the concrete around the ventilation shafts in their cells using nail clippers, bits of a fan and a few spoons, concealing their nightly progress by filling the holes with paste made from old newspapers. They finally wiggled through the jail's ventilation system and set off on a raft made of barrels, wire mesh and old raincoats across the water. Where, sadly, they very probably drowned.

Ronald Biggs, Wandsworth, London, 1965

The second of the £2.6m Great Train Robbers to escape from prison did so with three other inmates using a rope and a tubular ladder thown over the wall of the prison exercise yard from a van with a platform on top parked outside. "The four prisoners immediately made for the ­ladder and climbed over the top," a Home Office spokesman said at the time. "Prison officers tried to stop them, but were prevented by other prisoners in the yard." The four made good their escape in three getaway cars. Biggs fled to Paris for plastic surgery and a new ID, then to Australia and finally to Brazil, where he stayed for 35 years before voluntarily returning home in 2001.

Billy Hayes, Sea of Marmara, Turkey, 1975

Sentenced to 30 years in a Turkish jail for drug smuggling in 1970, the 22-year-old American spent a brutal year in Istanbul's Sagmalicar jail before being moved to an island prison. After six months of planning, he fought a prison guard, stole his uniform, and clutching $2,000 his father had smuggled into the prison in a photo album, rowed all night through a fierce storm to the mainland. There he dyed his blond hair black, walked halfway across Turkey and finally swam across a raging river to reach Greece. Watch the 1978 film Midnight Express for an (apparently highly inaccurate) idea of what it was like.

Pascal Payet, assorted French prisons, 2001, 2003, 2007

Payet, AKA Kalashnikov Pat, was serving 30 years for murder in Luynes jail when he escaped by helicopter for the first time. He was on the run for six years, during which period he organised the escape of three of his former fellow inmates, again by helicopter. Eventually ­recaptured and incarcerated in Grasse high security jail in the south of France, Payet flew to freedom once more in July 2007, in a Squirrel helicopter hijacked, along with its pilot, from the glamorous resort of Cannes half an hour ­earlier. The chopper landed on the ­penitentiary's roof, from where three heavily armed men set off in search of Payet. Amazingly, there have been 10 successful helicopter escapes from French jails in the past 20 years.

Antonio Ferrara, Fresnes, Paris, 2003

Ferrara, a legendary underworld explosives expert capable of blowing a safe open while leaving the cash inside unharmed, was sentenced to eight years for two armed robberies (he was suspected of 15 more). In March 2003, a couple of police cars pulled up in front of the gates of Fresnes jail outside Paris. Six men, dressed as police officers, got out. Three of them promptly opened fire on the two watchtowers with AK47s, while the others blew the front gates open with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Ferrara, meanwhile, calmly dynamited his cell door, jumped in one of the cars and was gone.