Miles Kington: What links royalty, photography and cricket?

The Hon Leonard Anstruther scored a quick 50 before being caught in the deep by Lady Georgina Fitzgolly

I have received many letters in appreciation of the late Patrick Lichfield, the photographer, and would like to publish some of them today.

From Sir George "Gubby" Trotter

Sir, I have perused all the tributes to the late Lord Lichfield, or Patrick as he was known to everyone, and I am amazed to see no mention of one of the great passions of his life, his abiding love of cricket.

I first came across Patrick in the Beatles years, when we both played for a while for a trendy cricket team based in the Kings Road called the Outswinging Sixties. I well remember fielding beside him in the slips once and asking him if there was really any common meeting point between cricket, royalty and photography.

"Oh, yes, old boy," he said. "You have to stand very still for all three. People in the royal family are trained to be motionless and to put up with hours of boredom on end. Same with fielders at cricket. And with photographers. Standing here in the slips is just another kind of ceremonial. And photography helps as well."

"How?" I asked.

"Watch this," he said. Just then the bowler came up to bowl, and the batsman swung and missed. There was a loud click.

"Howzat?" murmured Patrick. (He was always a very gentlemanly appealer.)

The umpire gave him out.

"But the batsman never touched it!" I said.

"No," admitted Patrick. "He must have been confused when he heard me clicking the camera shutter in my pocket ..."

From Tatiana Butler

Sir, I may be a granny now, but as a model in the mad days of the 1960s I got to know Patrick very well, or Paddy, as we all called him on calendar shoots. Once, when we were doing some glamour shots in the Namibian desert, we found ourselves accidentally sharing the same location as the girls being photographed for the Pirelli Calendar.

"This is absolutely wonderful!" Paddy said to us. "Two dozen lovely ladies, all in the same place! We must arrange a cricket match!"

And so came about the fixture known as The Pirelli XI v Lord Lichfield and the Twelve Most Beautiful Women In The World. Truth to say, he was the only one involved who had ever played much cricket before. And I have to admit that once the champagne had been cracked open at the first morning interval, not much cricket got played thereafter. But I still remember it as one of the best parties I ever went to. (People sometimes ask me if I ever had an affair with Patrick. I find that quite a shocking suggestion. The idea that I didn't, I mean ...)

From Lady Cheltenham

Sir, I can vouch for the foregoing. I knew Paddy quite well (or Lord Lichfield, as I like to think of him) by virtue of my also being closely related to the Queen (as which one of us is not?).

He was commissioned one day to come to Buckingham Palace to take a group photo of the Queen's cousins, all 20-odd of us, and I well remember that things were rather stiff and formal and not going too well. So, to break the ice, Lichfield decided that we should form into two teams and play each other at cricket.

No sooner said than done. We all spilled out into the gardens at the back of the palace and went to it with a will. I remember the Hon Leonard Anstruther scoring a quick 50, before being caught in the deep by Lady Georgina Fitzgolly. I remember, too, coming across Lichfield himself showing the Duchess of Derbyshire how to play a square cut with what seemed to me to be unnecessary intimacy.

We had such fun that I don't think the photo ever got taken! Or if it did, I never saw a copy of it.

From Lady Sepia Monochrome

I have got a copy of that photograph. I am not surprised it was never circulated. It shows Lady Cheltenham, wearing nothing but cricket pads ...

Sadly, that is all we have space for in this tribute to the Earl of Lichfield, or, as we must now call him, the late Lord Lichfield