The heartwarming gesture the Queen delivered the man who saved daughter Princess Anne
THE man who saved Princess Anne from a gun-wielding kidnapper has revealed how the Queen offered a personal gesture of gratitude.
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The former heavyweight boxer, Ronnie Russell, now 72, punched Ina Ball in the head twice as he tried to kidnap Princess Anne at gunpoint in London in 1974. Mr Russell was awarded the George Medial for bravery by the Queen, who told him: "The medal is from the Queen, but I want to thank you as Anne's mother."
He is now reluctantly selling the medal at auction because of his poor health, after suffering several strokes, and wishes to provide for his future.
It is expected to fetch between £15,000 and £20,000 at auction next month.
He said: "It was something I said I would never, ever do.
"What I would like is whoever does eventually buy the medal, I would hope they might invite me somewhere to tell them about what happened on the night."
He has now revealed how in a gesture of gratitude, the Queen paid off his house in Strood, Kent.
The news to him came after police visited him in his home after the indigent.
He said: “They were looking round my home and saying, ‘Oh this is a nice house’,” he told the Daily Mirror. “They asked if I had a mortgage and I said, ‘Yes, yes, why?’
“They said, ‘Well we are really telling you this a bit early but the Queen is going to pay off your mortgage as a gift for what you have done.’
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“I thought that was wonderful. I was actually close to repossession at the time.
“They were going to repossess my home. So I dug myself out of that one.”
Mr Russell was driving home to Kent when he thwarted the late-night ambush.
Ian Ball had blocked the Princess’s car on The Mall in central London and had fired shots, wounding four people.
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Among them, Ball shot the Princess’s chauffeur, minder, a policeman and a passing journalist as he tried to drag Anne from a car.
Mr Russell said: “It was very fast moving.”
He remembered seeing Ball trying to pull Anne from her car while her then husband, Captain Mark Phillips, was pulling her back.
He continued: "She was very, very together, telling him: 'Just go away and don't be such a silly man’.
"He stood there glaring at me with the gun and I hit him.
“I hit him as hard as I could and he was flat on the floor face down."
The Mirror quoted Buckingham Palace as saying the Queen’s gift would have come from her private funds.
Now living in Bristol, Mr Russell said he remembered the incident clearly.
Ball was later sent to a psychiatric hospital by an Old Bailey judge.
Also being sold alongside the medal is a letter from Downing Street informing Mr Russell of the award and a telegram from Princess Anne.
Auctioneer Oliver Pepys, from Dix Noonan Webb, said it has sold several George Medals in the past but most had been linked to World War Two.
He said: ”To be offering this peacetime medal, with such a cracking story, is a huge honour.”