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Full name: Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise

Full Title: HRH The Princess Royal

Born: Clarence House, London, on August 15, 1950, the second child and only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (later Queen Elizabeth II and HRH The Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

Education: Initially at home, then at Benenden School, a boarding school in Kent.

Marriage and family: Married Captain Mark Phillips in Westminster Abbey on November 14 1973. The marriage was dissolved in April 1992. Princess Anne, by then known as The Princess Royal, married Captain Timothy Laurence at Crathie Church, near Balmoral, on December 12 1992.

The Princess and Captain Phillips had two children, Peter Mark Andrew Phillips (b. November 15 1977) and Zara Anne Elizabeth (b. May 15 1981). The Princess's children do not have titles.

Official roles: President of the Save the Children Fund; President of the Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief; Commandant-in-Chief of the St John Ambulance Brigade; Colonel-in-Chief of The King's Royal Hussars, Royal Corps of Signals, The Royal Scots, The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps, and The 8th Canadian Hussars; Chief Commandant for women in the Royal Navy and Commandant-in-Chief of The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (The Princess Royal's Volunteers Corps); Chancellor of London University.

President or Patron of some 222 organisations; after five years as President of the British Olympic Association she was elected to the International Olympic Committee in 1988; President of the Riding for the Disabled Association; former President of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI).

Princess Anne's first public engagement was to open an education and training centre in Shropshire in 1969, shortly before she accompanied her parents on her first state visit to Austria.

Four months after her first marriage in 1973, the Princess was the subject of an unsuccessful abduction attempt. She was unhurt but her bodyguard was shot and wounded, later receiving the George Cross for bravery.

The Princess is famous for her tireless hands-on work for the Save the Children Fund, of which she became President in 1970. She travels extensively promoting the Fund's work and has won many admirers for her down-to-earth, practical approach.

The other major passion in her life is the love of horses she has inherited from her mother and grandmother. But the Princess is not merely an observer of equestrian sports - she has vast competition experience in many strands of horsemanship and at the highest level.

She was a regular entrant in the Horse of the Year Show at Wembley and Badminton Horse Trials. She has won gold and silver medals in the individual European Three-Day Event title as well as a team silver medal and competed for Great Britain in the Montreal Olympics in 1976.

She has also won the Sportswoman of the Year awards of the Sports Writers' Association, the Daily Express newspaper and World Sport (the journal of the British Olympic Association), and was voted BBC Sports Personality of 1971. She has also taken part as an amateur jockey in several National Hunt races.

Princess Anne gained a new title in 1987 when the Queen made her The Princess Royal. In the same year she was also made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1994 The Queen appointed the Princess a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.