Brian Arthur Field (15 December 1934 – 27 April 1979) was an English solicitor's clerk who was one of the masterminds of the 1963 Great Train Robbery.
He was the crucial link between the key informant known only as "Ulsterman" (who came up with the idea of robbing the money-laden night mail train and also provided the details of the schedule and contents of the trains) with the actual gang capable of planning and carrying out such a complex and large scale robbery.
Field only served prison sentence for perverting the course of justice, in relation to arranging the purchase of Leatherslade Farm, near Oakley, Buckinghamshire, which was used as the gang's hideout.
Brian Field quickly became successful in both his personal and professional lives, he married a German girl named Karin and rose to be a solicitor's managing clerk for John Wheater & Co.
Field drove a new Jaguar and had a house he called "Kabri" (an amalgam of Karin and Brian) with his wife at the Bridle Path, Whitchurch Hill, Oxfordshire, near Pangbourne, while his boss owned a battered Ford and lived in a rundown neighbourhood.
[2] On one occasion he described the contents and layout of a house near Weybridge where his wife Karin had once been a nanny to a couple of criminals that he represented at various times in his career, Gordon Goody and Buster Edwards.
According to one account by Piers Paul Read (1978), in January 1963, shortly after the furore of the Airport Job had died down, Brian Field called Gordon Goody to a meeting at the Old Bailey and asked him whether he was interested in a large sum of money that only a large gang could steal.
The following day, Goody and Edwards met with Field at his office at James and Wheater (New Quebec Street near Marble Arch).
There they met with Field and another man called "Mark" who was well dressed, aged around 50, with hair turned silvery grey and who spoke with a smooth accent.
"Mark" then convinced them to meet the actual informant and drove Edwards and Goody to Finsbury Park where they met another man they nicknamed the "Ulsterman", who was a slightly balding middle aged man, who spoke with a Northern Irish lilt (where Goody had grown up).
The "Ulsterman" told them about the night mail trains doing runs between London and Glasgow with large amounts of money.
[4] Bruce Reynolds and John Daly spotted a potential hideout in Leatherslade Farm at Brill only 27 miles from the crime scene.
When Gordon Goody asked about the details he was told that "Mark" would carry out the role of "Dustman" and clean up the farm in return for a 'drink' of £28,500.
According to Buster Edwards, he stole £10,000 in ten shilling notes to help pay "Mark's" drink.
Brian, wife Karin and his associate "Mark" brought the vans and drove the rest of the gang that remained to 'Kabri' to recover.
Since the crime was committed in Buckinghamshire, it was decided that the trial should occur there, despite the small size of the local court facilities (Aylesbury Assizes).
Tommy Butler however was called upon to investigate the incident and make a report to Judge Davies, who promptly dismissed the claim.
[8] In an article Karin wrote for the German magazine Stern, she confirmed that she took Roy James to Thame railway station so he could go to London, and that she led a convoy of two vans back to Kabri, where the gang were joined by wives and girlfriends for a celebratory party.
During this time, Brian also got to know the Prince of Spain's English tutor, and convinced her to bring Prince Felipe (subsequently crowned King Felipe VI) and his two sisters, then in their early teenage years, to a book fair being held at King's College, an international English school in Madrid.
A Mercedes driven by the pregnant 28-year-old daughter of well-known hairdresser Raymond Bessone (better known as "Mr. Teasy Weasy") crossed a damaged section of the dividing crash barrier and hit Field's oncoming Porsche.
He, along with Amber Bessone, her husband and two children, were killed instantly; Sian was not declared dead until the following day, at West Middlesex Hospital.