Brian McConnell Last Updated: 10:21am BST 14/07/2004 The Telegraph.co.uk Brian Mcconnell, who has died aged 76, was the Fleet Street reporter awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his part in foiling an attempt to kidnap Princess Anne in the Mall in 1974. On the evening of March 20, the Princess and her then husband, Capt Mark Phillips, were being driven down the Mall near Admiralty Arch when a driver slewed his car in front of theirs. Leaping out, the man thrust a gun through the window; he planned to kidnap the Princess and demand a £3 million ransom. A police inspector in the car with the royal couple tried to reason with him, and was shot. McConnell, who had written a book on assassinations, was in a taxi travelling ahead of the royal limousine. Hearing a crash and then shots, he jumped out of the cab and ran to the crashed car, telling the gunman: "You can't do that. These are my friends. Don't be silly. Just give me the gun." In reply the man told him to get out of the way, then shot him in the chest. Staggering to the side of the road, McConnell said to a woman there: "I think I've been shot." "You'd better sit down," she replied. The kidnapper was overcome, having shot not only McConnell and the inspector, but also another policeman and the royal chauffeur - and all four were taken to St George's Hospital. On regaining consciousness, McConnell could remember little. Then he saw Nick Davies, a Daily Mirror reporter who, clothed in a borrowed doctor's white coat, was waiting to take down his exclusive story. McConnell spent a week in hospital, and was later presented with the Queen's Gallantry Medal at Buckingham Palace. The son of a surveyor, John Brian McConnell was born on December 27 1928, and went to Woodmansterne Road School, Streatham, before being evacuated to Eastbourne and then Bookham, Surrey. On returning to Streatham, he attended whatever school was available, including St Joseph's College, Norwood, a Jewish orphanage and a home for unmarried mothers. The most valuable lessons he learned were shorthand and typing. He left school at 14, and found work on the council workers' Municipal Journal, then the South London Press. He did his National Service with the RAF as a wireless operator. On coming out, McConnell married Margaret Walden. He went to the Daily Mirror, with which he was to remain connected as staff man and freelance for much of his career. A good, hard-working, convivial reporter who was always polite, he served variously as the paper's crime reporter, Old Bailey correspondent and editor of the "Live Letters" column. For three years he was the news editor for the Sun after it became a tabloid in 1969. But he particularly enjoyed freelancing, not least since this gave him the chance to write books. These included Assassination (1969), which ranged from the Assyrians to the murder of the Kennedys; and The Rise and Fall of the Brothers Kray (1969), which was based on Mirror reports of their trials. He also published The Sign of the Crane (1978), the history of a London printing firm; The Neilson File (1983), about the murderer Donald Neilson; and Holy Killers (1995), an account of murderous clerics and religious leaders. In later years, McConnell wrote light-hearted articles for the New Law Journal and lectured to conferences in North America. Up to the time of death on Saturday, he was writing a local history column in the South London Press. He recently celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of his arrival in Fleet Street with a party at El Vino wine bar. Looking back on his career, he said he was proudest of the title with which Edgar Wallace is commemorated on a plaque at Ludgate Circus, at the bottom of Fleet Street: "reporter".