Arthur Edwards: Confessions of a royal snapper

Arthur Edwards has an anecdote on the subject of country walks which, in the highly unlikely event of it ever being published within the pages of the Ramblers' Association handbook, should be recorded beneath the heading: Highgrove, Gloucestershire.

The Sun's hardy royal photographer was tramping along a public footpath, his long-distance 600mm camera and lens in his grasp and a royal residence on his horizon, when a lone horse-rider approached, angrily shouting: "What are you doing!"

"I'm just doing a job," retorted the lensman, recognising the horseman as the heir to the throne of England.

"Some job."

"At least I've got a job."

At which, the prince departed. "He give the horse such a bloody whack with the whip and scuttled off. I've since learnt that when he got back to the house all the policemen were sat around in the kitchen having coffee with the staff and he stormed in, banged the whip on the table, all the coffee cups went flying. He said 'You're supposed to be protecting me and Arthur Edwards is on my front lawn.'"

For the past three decades, Prince Charles, 58, and Edwards, 66, have travelled the world together, the unlikely couple, the Cockney and the King-to-be.

At times they bicker ("I've had right toe-to-toe bollockings where he's given me a real lashing with his tongue - I never run away from him, I stand me ground.") In another altercation, at Sandringham, the prince screamed out "Mr Edwards!" and the photographer responded "Mr Windsor!".

But mostly they rub along pretty well, to the point where the snapper likes to see himself as almost part of the royal retinue. "When I go to meet these world leaders, Prince Charles tells 'em. He says 'Mr Edwards has been with me for 30 years', he checks with me and says 'Is that right Arthur?' and I say 'Yes sir'. I was with the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi (Edwards pronounces this, Fred Flintstone-like, as "Abberdabby"). Prince Charles he tells 'im about it. John Howard of Australia, President Musharraf of Pakistan, all these people. Prince Charles says 'Oh yes, Mr Edwards..." He's very complimentary you know."

This seat at court has given Edwards a portfolio that chronicles some of the most turbulent years in royal history, providing The Sun with countless front page images and endearing to him five editors from Larry Lamb to Rebekah Wade.

So resilient has Edwards been that he was recently recognised at the What The Papers Say Awards for his Lifetime Achievement in the newspaper industry. Last year Wade gave him a new five-year contract that will mean that The Sun soon has a septuagenarian snapper on its staff.

Yet he is no dinosaur. These days he goes on assignment armed not just with his trusted Nikon D2X but ready to shoot video for thesun.co.uk. "On the recent tour to the Gulf I did five videos, each a minute or minute-and-a-half long. Last week in Brighton I did a video - 'The Queen goes to the seaside'. I had 8,000 hits. I also do a podcast for the website," he says. "I'm always stretching and trying to do different things."

So intimate is Edwards' knowledge of the interaction between the royals and the press that he was recently summoned by MPs to give evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport for its inquiry into media invasion of privacy. Edwards made headlines that day as he claimed to have it on personal authority from Prince William that he would marry his girlfriend, Kate Middleton. "I have talked to him about this," Arthur told the committee.

Some observers felt that Edwards' cameo helped his News International bosses in deflecting the attention of MPs from the issue of interception of royal voicemails by The Sun's sister paper, the News of the World.

Edwards says that his presence before the committee gave him the chance to make a serious point about the threat posed by paparazzi photographers to the safety of the woman who may one day be queen. "I spoke passionately about what I believe. They are in danger of doing to her what the press did to Princess Diana," he says. "I know in my day I did lots of pictures of Princess Diana but I didn't harass her and I didn't photograph her intrusively just for a picture of her that day."

On reading Edwards' evidence, his former editor Kelvin MacKenzie claimed to detect double standards. In a column in Edwards' own newspaper, MacKenzie teased: "Is this the same Arthur Edwards who, when I employed him, spent three weeks lying in the lush undergrowth of the Caribbean trying to photograph Diana in a bikini?"

Sitting back on a sofa in a Wapping coffee bar, Edwards responds to this with mild irritation. "That was totally untrue, that was. What he said was that I was there for three weeks, when I was there for three days. And the other thing is that he sent me there, he was the editor who ordered me to go. So he couldn't have been more bloody wrong."

Edwards believes that Middleton is at risk from a new breed of photographer that he does not recognise from his years in the royal pack. "I see squads of people chasing and I don't know who they are. I see different names of different agencies every day and they're all looking for the big bucks picture. I can understand that they read stories of paparazzi pictures making lots of money and they're chasing the golden dream but at what expense? This girl is a private citizen."

Then he remembers that, once, he himself did leap into a car and set off in pursuit of Diana. "When I think what I did that day. I was a young photographer and she was 19 or 20. One mistake and we could have caused an accident and been responsible for seriously injuring not only her but ourselves as well. I think back to that and I'm horrified because it was all for a picture and a picture is not worth losing your little finger for, let alone your life. The reason was that we had been lied to and told that Lady Diana Spencer wasn't staying at Sandringham. When I saw her driving out of there I was so incensed, I did everything I could to get the picture. But it could have been fatal and if I didn't learn a lesson then, in 1980, then I would never learn a lesson."

After Diana died following such a chase 17 years later, Edwards suffered the ignominy of being lumped together with the paparazzi who had played a role in her fatal crash. "I remember coming out of a hospital in Paris after photographing Diana's coffin being removed for being flown back to England and I had difficulty getting a taxi because I had cameras round my neck," he says. "Unfortunately we all get tarred with the same brush."

Edwards found his way to The Sun by following a footpath far more worn than any of those around Highgrove. He is a graduate of the East End school, cutting his teeth on the East London Advertiser, the Dagenham Post and the Stratford Express before arriving at The Sun in the mid-Seventies to work shifts.

But before entering journalism he learnt to take pictures in an altogether different environment, as a young assistant to the famed fashion photographer John French (who also trained David Bailey and Terence Donovan). "That gave me massive confidence. I could do anything after that. John French didn't know a thing about photography but he could compose a photograph. He left the photography to me and it filled me with confidence."

The turning point in Edwards' career, in his life in fact, came when the legendary Sun editor Larry Lamb, who had taken him on staff, pondered one day on a comment made by the young Prince of Wales. "Prince Charles was just coming out the Navy. He had said 30 was a good time to marry and he was 28 or 29 at the time," recalls Edwards. "Larry Lamb thought it was a good idea for someone to see who this woman was going to be."

Edwards believes his assignment made him "the first photographer ever to be appointed to cover the royals for a newspaper". Not that he was exactly ecstatic about it at the time. "I almost didn't want to do it because I felt 'What a rotten job'. What a fool I'd have been if I hadn't taken it."

Having once dreamed of taking pictures on the touchline at West Ham United's Boleyn Ground he found himself among the thoroughbreds, human and equine, at Cowdray Park or the Guards Polo Club.

Bolstered by his experience of working with John French and the fashion elite, Edwards was unintimidated as he went about looking for the future king's future wife. "One day I stumbled across Diana," he recalls, before introducing the anecdote with the words "...as I said to the select committee..."

"I wasn't certain who she was. When I found what I thought was her, I said 'Are you Lady Diana Spencer? May I take your picture please?' To which she said 'Yes' and posed for me."

And so began a special relationship. The Sun rarely misses the chance to point out that Princess Diana would refer to Edwards as "Our Arthur". Some of his shots of her, standing in sunlight in a see-through dress, and years later in front of the Taj Mahal, played a part in creating the Diana legend.

For 12 years on the royal beat Edwards worked in tandem with the The Sun's intrepid royal correspondent Harry Arnold. When he talks of Arnold, the veteran photographer becomes a little emotional. "Harry was a quick-thinking, ace, tabloid newspaper reporter. He thought on his feet and was very sharp. I once saw him do a 1,000-word feature off the top of his head. We looked after each other and when he left for the Mirror, at his farewell I actually cried. I was asked to say some words and I couldn't finish them I just choked up. I was stressed so much that it had ended because we really were such a good team."

Arnold left for the Daily Mirror and has now retired. Diana died in Paris. Arthur and Charlie have continued to share each other's lives. The photographer says he couldn't have gone on if he hadn't had such affection for the royals. "I like Prince Charles an awful lot, I really like Camilla, I loved Diana," he says.

When The Sun asks him to get behind the keyboard and write about the Windsors (as well as picturing them), his words are full of "Gawd bless 'em" bonhomie. A recent piece on Kate Middleton, peppered with comments such as "Prince Charles's staff told me" and "one courtier told me", concluded: "A royal wedding is a wonderful occasion and cheers us all up."

He might, he concedes, be a bit too nice to the royals, and Charles in particular. "I do sometimes think maybe I should be a little more objective but when you like someone it's difficult to see things other than their way."

He likes the prince - but he feels sorry for him too. "I've always defended him because it's a terrible life that he's got. If he doesn't speak out about what's happening in the world, on poor architecture or complementary medicine, what sort of life would it be? Opening fetes, pulling plaques? He's not just got this life until he's 65, he's got it until he dies."

Confident though Our Arthur has always appeared, chirping away on the slopes at Klosters or at garden parties at the palace, he has his insecurities. "In your inner self you always think there's someone better or more talented than you. Of course there are brilliant people out there, but I think I'm doing all right. I've been over 30 years at the sharp end of The Sun and no one has come and taken that job away from me. Some have tried but no one has succeeded."

Later this year, he will bring out a retrospective of his work in the form of a book. He has already chosen the pictures that will feature and says he still regards them with a sense of disbelief that he was the person who had the chance to press the shutter. "I look at that book and I can't believe it was me who took these pictures and was there in those situations. I'm amazed I did that."