On the evening of March 20, 1974, a maroon limousine carrying Princess Anne turned onto The Mall, the grand ceremonial avenue leading to Buckingham Palace. About 200 yards from the palace gates, a white Ford Escort swerved across the road and forced the royal car to a stop. A man climbed out holding a pistol in each hand. In his pocket was a typed letter demanding £2 million for the princess’s safe return.
Within minutes, he had shot four men on that quiet royal avenue, dragged open the car door, and seized Anne by the arm. The 23-year-old princess, facing a gunman only a few feet away, gave an answer that Britain has never forgotten. At the time, royal protection operated on a simple assumption: that no ordinary person would ever dare attack the monarchy. The royal family moved through London with ease, traveling known routes in ordinary cars, guarded by a handful of police escorts rather than a security apparatus.
Princess Anne was the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II. She had been married to Captain Mark Phillips for barely four months when she attended a charity film screening on Pall Mall that evening. With her were her husband, her lady-in-waiting Rowena Brassey, her chauffeur Alexander Callender, and her personal protection officer, Inspector James Beaton. Beaton, 31, was the entirety of her armed defense.
He carried one pistol and had received minimal firearms training—only a handful of practice shots. There was no armored car, no convoy, no second vehicle of officers, and no rehearsed drill for a blocked road. The man who had been planning the abduction for two years was Ian Ball, an unemployed man in his mid-20s living in rented rooms in North London. He suffered from mental illness that had gone largely untreated.
He believed the country had failed people like him, particularly in its treatment of mental health under the health service. Ball had chosen his target carefully. He studied the princess’s published public engagements, learning where she would be and when. He obtained two handguns abroad, where firearms were easier to come by than in Britain.
He acquired handcuffs and tranquilizers, rented a flat, and hired a car under the false name John Williams. He typed his ransom demands in advance on a hired machine. The letter, addressed to the queen herself, demanded £2 million in used £5 notes, packed into 20 unlocked suitcases, and placed aboard an aircraft. Some accounts say he also demanded that the queen personally deliver the ransom.
When the royal limousine turned onto The Mall, Ball cut across its path. The driver braked hard, and the car stopped in the middle of the avenue, 200 yards from the palace gates. Ball approached with a pistol in each hand. Inspector Beaton stepped out to put himself between the gunman and the princess.
Ball fired, striking Beaton in the shoulder from close range. Beaton reached for his own weapon—a Walther pistol—and managed a single shot before it jammed. Despite being wounded, Beaton continued to shield the car. Ball fired again, and the bullet tore through Beaton’s hand.
A third shot hit him in the stomach. Still, the inspector kept trying to place himself between the gunman and the princess. With Beaton down, Ball turned to the car. He reached the rear door, took hold of the handle, and pulled it open.
He seized Princess Anne by the forearm and told her she must come with him until the ransom could be arranged. Her reported response has become part of British legend: “Not bloody likely. ” By her own later account, she added that in any case, she did not have £2 million. Anne and Mark Phillips fought to keep her in the car, hauling the door back toward them in a grim tug-of-war across the back seat.
The struggle tore Anne’s evening dress. Ball had planned for locks, guards, and police, but he had made no plan for a princess who simply refused to cooperate with her own abduction. Her resistance bought crucial seconds, and help was already running toward the gun. Constable Michael Hills, 22, heard the shots from nearby and ran toward the danger.
He grappled with Ball and was shot in the stomach. Before falling, he used his radio to call for help—a message that first alerted the wider police force to what was happening. Brian McConnell, a Fleet Street journalist, was passing in a taxi when he saw the scene. He got out and walked toward the gunman, trying to talk him down, telling him these were friends of his and that the situation must end.
Ball shot him in the chest. Chauffeur Alexander Callender left the driver’s seat and went for Ball, trying to break his grip on the princess. Ball shot him in the chest as well. Four men were now wounded on a single stretch of road: Beaton shot three times, Hills shot in the stomach, McConnell shot in the chest, and Callender shot in the chest.
By a narrow margin of chance, none of them died. The gunman was still on his feet, still armed, still reaching for Anne. Then Ronald Russell, a former boxer and a cleaning company manager who happened to be driving past, stopped his car. He walked up behind Ball and struck him hard on the head.
When Ball turned and brought the gun around, Russell hit him again, full in the face. The blows broke Ball’s grip on the moment and drew his attention away from the princess. Rattled and hurt, he turned and ran on foot toward St. James’s Park.
Detective Constable Peter Edmunds gave chase, ran him down through the park, and arrested him. When the shooting stopped, four wounded men lay on the ceremonial road. Anne climbed out of the car, her dress torn, and went to see to the men who had been hurt for her sake. By every account, she remained composed to the point of iron calm.
All four wounded men survived and were taken to hospital. Beaton, shot three times, required a long recovery. The country woke the next morning to news that seemed barely believable. An armed man had tried to kidnap the princess within sight of Buckingham Palace.
It remains to this day the closest anyone has come to seizing a member of the immediate royal family on a public street. When police searched Ball after his arrest, they found the typed ransom letter, more than £300 in used £10 notes for his escape, the handcuffs, and the tranquilizers. Ball pleaded guilty to attempted murder and to the attempted kidnapping of the princess. He was not sent to an ordinary prison; he was ordered to be detained indefinitely under powers dealing with the mentally ill and was sent to Broadmoor secure hospital.
In later years, from within detention, Ball at times claimed the affair had been a hoax and that he had been framed. These statements came long after the fact from a detained and unwell man and should be weighed as such. The attack exposed the thinness of royal protection. The daughter of the sovereign had traveled a predictable route in an unarmored car with a single lightly trained officer whose pistol jammed after one shot.
There was no follow car, no medical cover, and no plan for an ambush. The gap Ball exploited was not a one-time failure. These were years of bombings and political violence on the British mainland, of kidnappings and hijackings around the world. The threat had changed, but royal protection had not.
A review of royal protection methods began, and the changes that followed were fundamental. A dedicated command for royal protection was developed, and over subsequent years it grew into the specialist unit that guards the family today. Officers were trained in close protection as a craft, drilled in firearms, defensive driving, and emergency medical response. Ordinary limousines gave way to armored cars.
Single officers gave way to teams. Published, predictable routes became guarded secrets. On September 26, 1974, six months after the attack, the queen formally recognized the courage shown on The Mall. Beaton was awarded the George Cross, the highest award for gallantry a civilian can receive.
Ronald Russell and Michael Hills were each awarded the George Medal. The Queen’s Gallantry Medal went to Alexander Callender, Brian McConnell, and Peter Edmunds. A chauffeur who used his own car to help block Ball’s escape received the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct. Princess Anne went on with her public life.
She became the Princess Royal and continued to carry the same blunt, unglamorous manner she had shown the gunman. Beaton returned to royal protection, served for many years, and later held a senior appointment in the royal household. Ian Ball remained in secure detention. The indefinite order under which he was held meant he did not walk free.
He has remained confined for decades, occasionally surfacing in interviews from within his detention. The ransom note Ball typed survives in the national records. The Mall looks much as it always did, straight and grand and calm, leading down to the palace gates. Most visitors walking it have no idea that the tarmac beneath them was once the scene of four shootings.
The attempt on Princess Anne failed, but it failed by the narrowest of margins, on the strength of individual courage rather than any system designed to keep her safe. The protection that now surrounds every senior royal is, in a real sense, the legacy of that night.