Leading Article : Legacy of the long lenses

What exactly do they provide for us, the snappers who hide in dense bushes with their long lenses, stalking the Royal Family through the glens of Balmoral? Do the pictures that result offer us some great insight into the condition of the Royal Family in our times? We see young princes wading tentatively through a river, the Queen Mother walking with apparent discomfort with a stick, or the monarch herself looking glumly (and who could blame her?) across some drizzly moor.

Social historians of the future will probably find these shots no more revealing than the stagey official portraits of a previous era when royals turned stiffly to face some society photographer in their drawing room or posed archly on the same grouse moors. It is, perhaps, the distress caused to those pictured that will say more to the future about our times.