French draw veil over photos of nude Prince

NUDE pictures of the Prince of Wales will not be published in Britain today, a French magazine's publishers confirmed.

The photographs show the Prince, standing naked in his private room at a chateau near Avignon, southern France.

He has a towel draped over his right shoulder, partly covering his groin.

The pictures were first published in the German tabloid Bild, not normally available in Britain.

But publishers of Paris Match, which featured more of the grainy shots, taken with a long-range lens, of the Prince on holiday, said they had decided to follow the example of British newspapers not to publish them in the UK.

The magazine's distributors are understood to have taken legal advice about the move.

British newspapers are expected to shy away from publishing the photos, which would be seen as a flagrant breach of the press code of practice.

People who have seen both magazines said neither revealed every detail of the Prince's anatomy due to the strategic positioning of the towel and the long-distance, grainy nature of the pictures.