On 20 August 1974, Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, and her husband Captain Mark Phillips were driving back to their Buckinghamshire home when their car was forced to stop by a man who leapt in front of the vehicle and fired a gun. The attacker, Ian Ball, stepped forward, pointed a handgun and shouted that he intended to kidnap Princess Anne. He then grabbed Anne’s arm and tried to pull her from the car. A passerby and the royal party’s chauffeur intervened; the chauffeur, Alex Callender, sustained head wounds while attempting to protect the princess. Another civilian, a postal worker named Alan Hadaway, also confronted the assailant and was shot and wounded. The quick actions of those present, together with the intervention of police, prevented the abduction. Princess Anne was not physically seriously injured in the assault, though she was knocked about during the struggle. The attacker shot several people at the scene; one of the wounded, a local resident named Thornley, later died as a result of the attack. Accountable details—including the sequence of events, the identities of the injured civilians, and the involvement of the chauffeur—were reported in contemporary news accounts and in later official summaries. Ian Ball was arrested at the scene. During his trial he admitted the attempt but the court found him guilty of attempted kidnapping and other offenses. In 1975 he was sentenced to detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure on the basis of diminished responsibility; psychiatrists had diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. The sentence meant he was detained indefinitely in secure psychiatric facilities rather than imprisoned for a fixed term. Ball remained under hospital orders for many years; he was released from secure psychiatric care in the 1980s and later lived under supervision. The incident prompted questions about royal security and crowd control for members of the royal family. At the time, Princess Anne was known for her relatively informal public life, often carrying out public engagements without the heavy security detail now commonly seen around senior royals. The 1974 attack is often cited in discussions of how security arrangements for the British royal family evolved in subsequent decades, leading to more structured protection measures for those at particular risk. Princess Anne continued her public duties after the attack. The event has been the subject of extensive press coverage and later retrospective accounts, which generally agree on the broad facts—date, location, the assailant’s actions and diagnosis, and the intervention of civilians and police that prevented the kidnapping. Some peripheral details have been variably reported in different sources; where accounts differ, official court records and contemporary news dispatches provide the most reliable documentation. The 1974 attempt remains one of the most serious assaults on a member of the British royal family in the 20th century and is remembered both for the violence of the attack and for the conspicuous bravery of civilians and staff who rushed to protect the princess.