Lord Lichfield, a cousin of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and an accomplished professional photographer who took pictures at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, died early on Friday, a spokesperson for his office said.
Lichfield (66) had been staying with friends near Oxford when he suffered a stroke on Wednesday and was treated at John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford.
Lichfield was one of Britain’s best-known photographers and often took portraits for the royal family. In July 1981, he took the official photographs at Charles and Diana’s wedding.
Buckingham Palace said the queen was ”deeply saddened” by Lichfield’s death.
In a career spanning about 40 years, he photographed a host of stars, including actor Michael Caine, musician Mick Jagger, director Roman Polanski and the artist David Hockney. Last month, he took a special set of photographs of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher to mark her 80th birthday.
Born Thomas Patrick John Anson, he was the son of Viscount Anson and Princess Anne of Denmark, the niece of Queen Elizabeth the queen mother, who died in 2002 — making him first cousin once removed of the queen.
Lichfield was best known for the photographs he took of 1960s celebrities, images that were seen as capturing the ”swinging London” spirit of that era.
”We did behave quite badly, but it wasn’t so much an immoral as an amoral decade,” he once said. ”I drank too much — we all did; smoked the odd joint; and saw the world on the arm of a pretty girl at somebody else’s expense.”
Among his most celebrated photos was a group portrait of filmmaker Roman Polanski, artist David Hockney and writer Lady Antonia Fraser.
He also photographed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, during their exile in Paris after Edward’s abdication. He was having trouble getting the couple to smile, so deliberately fell off his chair to get the laugh he wanted for his photo. — Sapa-AP