Easily the most harrowing event in Princess Anne’s extraordinary life occurred in 1974, when she and her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips, were being driven back to Buckingham Palace, and a car blocked their path. That car’s driver, Ian Ball, was armed with a pistol, intending to kidnap the princess. Immediately, Ball fired, hitting the princess’s chauffeur, and also shooting Jim Beaton, her security officer. A journalist who tried to intervene also took a bullet. Ball, still brandishing his weapon, ordered Anne to exit her car. She responded with the steely grit that would become her hallmark, uttering the now-iconic words, “Not bloody likely.”
The kidnapping attempt was foiled by sheer coincidence. Ronnie Russell, a boxer, happened to be walking by at that moment, saw the chaos unfolding, and punched Ball in the back of the head. While the hero attended to Princess Anne, Ball approached Russell, but the boxer knocked the would-be kidnapper to the ground with an expertly thrown punch to the jaw. “He was flat on the floor face down. I jumped on his back for good measure. I could have died, yeah, but I knew what I was doing,” Russell told The Mirror. “The only person I did not want to get shot was Princess Anne.”
Ultimately, Anne emerged unscathed, and the men who were shot all survived. Not only did Russell receive a medal from Queen Elizabeth herself, the monarch also paid off his mortgage.
