Arthur Edwards: How a trip to the polo launched a career as Britain’s longest-serving Royal photographer

The British Royal family has provided some of the most iconic moments in history. After becoming the go-to photographer to cover them in 1975, Arthur Edwards was the person most-perfectly placed to tell their story.

Edwards has released a book called Behind the Crown, with some of his most famous shots.

He told Francesca Rudkin on the Sunday Session he hadn’t always dreamed of being a Royal photographer and that it came about purely by accident.

“I was in the office doing the Sunday morning shift and one of the reporters said I’m going to the polo today, do you fancy coming?”

Arthur went along and once the game of polo was finished, then Prince Charles, now King Charles, was feeding sugar cubes to one of his ponies.

“I was about 10 feet away with my camera and I took this really nice picture, offered it up and it went straight in the paper the next day. I thought God, this is easy.”

Having noticed the quality of photo Edwards was turning in, his editor told him that he was to be tasked with finding out who Prince Charles was set to marry as the prince arrived at what was deemed an appropriate age.

Having not originally been a follower of the Royals, Arthur told Rudkin he soon became obsessed with the job of locating Charles’ potential bride and that he began taking his family along to polo events in the hope of securing the prized shot, turning in a number of exclusive photos in the process.

“The other newspapers started waking up thinking ‘woah, we’ve gotta start doing this’. Several girlfriends came along and went and then one day I went to a polo match on a Saturday, which is unusual because we don’t have a paper on a Sunday, and I was told he was there with a lady called Lady Dianna Spencer.”

Arthur says he scanned the crowd of beautiful women, with his eyes eventually resting upon one wearing a necklace bearing the letter ‘D’.

In a move that would jettison his career into another stratosphere, Edwards asked the young Lady Diana if she would allow him to photograph her.

“She said yes and she posed up for me.”

As Diana was only 19 at the time, he says he was unsure as to whether she was the potential bride he was after, only telling his editor to run the photograph when he saw Charles and Diana fishing together at the Royal estate at Balmoral.

“I rang the office and said get that picture out. On Monday we ran a headline ‘Charles is in love again’ and this picture I did of Diana at the polo match and the caption was ‘Lady Diana Spencer: All the qualities to be Queen.’ And that was it, it, it was off and running.”

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